‘English’ Review: Pulitzer Winner Debuts on Broadway at the Top of the Class

variety.com:

Christian Lewis Unlike casual language learners — say, in a high school French class, or on Duolingo — for the characters in Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer-winning “English,” language acquisition feels imperative.

Set in Karaj, Iran in 2008, the play centers on a group of four adults taking a class to pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam.

Each has their own reasons for needing a good score: Elham (Tala Ashe) requires it to go to med school in Australia; Omid (Hadi Tabbal) to get a green card; Roya (Pooya Mohseni) to appease the demands of her son in Canada, who is raising his daughter in English; and Goli (Ava Lalezarzadeh) may not have a plan for what’s next, but she knows that English fluency is a must.

While there is some fun to be had — show and tell, a vocab drill game involving tossing a ball, and screenings of classic rom coms — passing this exam is a matter of the utmost importance for this quartet of English language learners.