"English" at Berkeley Rep

 

Berkeley Rep production photo by Alessandra Mello

This is a play I've been wanting to see for quite a while. It's very popular, and it seems like every town I go to, I see this show listed. It was playing in DC when we were there a couple of months ago, and we considered going to see it, even knowing we had tickets to see it in Berkeley coming up, but it was sold out. So it's a very popular play! And it seems very thoughtful, from reading the descriptions. So, can it live up to the hype?

The Play

The set-up for English seems very simple: four students and their teacher, studying English in Tehran so they can pass the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) to facilitate emigrating to join family members overseas. Three of the students, all women, struggle with the language, while the one male student seems remarkably proficient. The play examines the relationships of people with languages, how languages reflect and create identities, and how non-native speakers relate to others in their learned languages.

There are lots of fascinating topics covered. It's a small play, about a few people and their relationships and their thoughts and feelings around language, country, family, and much more. No big explosions or bombshells (though definitely some surprises!). Just a really solid text.

The Performance

I thought all of the performances were terrific. This play follows the convention that when one is speaking in their native language (Farsi, in this case), they speak unaccented English, and when speaking in their learned language (English, here), they speak it accented to various degrees. I thought all the actors handled that very well. Several characters mention that they feel they are "loud" when speaking in English, though they are not, in fact, speaking loudly. It's just one of the insights about how people feel about speaking in different tongues.

The set (designed by Annie Smart and lighted by Reza Behjat) is simple but effective. It's a very plain classroom with a few desks and a whiteboard, plus a video player that can be rolled out. This keeps the emphasis on the people and their interactions very nicely.

The Bottom Line

I don't have a lot to add about the play, beyond that I really enjoyed it and found it thought-provoking. It's one of the few shows I've come out of lately thinking about the content more than flaws in the presentation. I appreciate that neither the script nor the production tries to do too much: it keeps the focus where it needs to be, on the people and the ideas, rather than on the production. So kudos to director Mina Morita for keeping everyone in line such that the production doesn't get in the way of the play.

The show runs at Berkeley Rep through May 7, and is well worth seeing.