We rarely pause to consider why we learn a language; we simply approach it as the natural way of pulling the inside outwards. It is how we give shape to need, desire, and the private weather of the self. But a second language sits differently. It exists where choice and necessity blur, and when that language falters, it can do the unthinkable: it shrinks the speaker into a flattened version of themselves. In Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize–winning English, the classroom becomes a charged, sacred space where a new tongue can either open a life or erase the person trying to claim it.

In Australia, where multilingual and migrant histories shape everyday life, that tension feels instantly recognisable. Learning a second language is never just grammar; it is choosing what of yourself survives the journey while navigating the social and political pressures of belonging in a culture not your own. 

Set in an Iranian classroom in 2008, four adults gather to prepare for the TOEFL exam under one strict mandate: ‘English Only.’ Toossi employs a brilliant theatrical device: the audience hears English at all times, but its quality shifts with the intent. When the characters speak ‘Farsi,’ the English is fluent and full of personality—we see the whole person. When they speak ‘English,’ the language becomes halting, effortful, and artificial. The effect is quietly radical: we hear one language, but witness two selves—the vibrant interior life and the diminished version forced into performance.

Under Craig Baldwin’s precise and empathetic direction, the five actor ensemble offers a beautifully diverse and luminous portrait of individuals caught between tongues, showing how fluency can free you, shrink you, or remake you entirely. The stakes emerge slowly but unmistakably: why they’re here and what they hope to claim. A simple classroom becomes a taut study of people at crossroads, negotiating who they are and who they’re allowed to be.

Nicole Chamoun as the teacher, Marjan, renders this role with striking restraint and composure. She embodies a woman wrestling with the dissonance between her Iranian present and the British life she once wore like a second skin—a self now dimming as her fluency slips away. Chamoun masterfully captures the internal panic of a woman losing her sense of self. As the gap between who she was and where she is widens with every forgotten idiom, the pain of that drift becomes palpable.

Pedram Biazar is beautifully calibrated as Omid, bringing a charismatic, quietly enigmatic depth to the class’s most fluent student. He creates an immediate pull for Marjan—not as a romantic escape, but as a living echo of the ease she once inhabited. Biazar plays Omid with a watchful stillness, hinting at a complicated history that his perfect vowels can’t quite hide. For him, language is both a bridge for connection and a veil for concealment, a duality that makes his presence feel at once inviting and unsettling.

In a poignant portrayal of cultural erasure, Neveen Hanna breathes life into Roya, a grandmother whose journey becomes the play’s most heartbreaking anchor. While she initially seeks English as a bridge to her assimilated son and granddaughter in Canada, Roya ultimately realises that fluency is a doubleedged sword, a tool that demands the burial of her “Farsi self” and the vibrant heritage she holds dear.

Goli, portrayed with a radiant, wideeyed optimism by Minerva Khodabande, serves as the play’s youthful heartbeat.  Khodabande’s performance glows with a sincerity that cuts through the room’s heavier tensions, highlighting the bittersweet innocence of wanting to belong to a world that hasn’t yet hurt her. She is the promise of what language can open, before the cost of entry is fully understood.

Elham, brought to life with a sharp, blistering intensity by Setareh Naghoni, stands as the plot’s most formidable force. A high-achieving medical student, she views English not as a passion but as a wall to be conquered to reach her future in Australia. Naghoni’s performance is a masterclass in the rage of the overqualified- the visible friction of a brilliant woman forced to sound small, her intellect trapped behind the bars of a foreign tongue.

While the story carries thematic weight, its heart beats in the comic absurdity of the classroom – the clumsy phrasing, pop-culture tangents, and the high-wire act of awkward small talk. These moments are as revealing as they are funny, capturing the specific, shared hilarity of people stumbling toward connection in a language that won’t yet obey them.

Tender and transformative, English reminds us that language is never just a matter of grammar; it is a social muscle that dictates how we connect and where we are allowed to belong. See it to understand. See it to feel. See it to remember what it costs to be known.

English plays at the Seymour Centre until May 2. For further details, visit: https://www.seymourcentre.com/event/english/

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