Review: Learning ‘English,’ When Your Accent Is a ‘War Crime’
How our mother tongue gives us voice yet limits our world — and how a new tongue expands that world yet may strangle our voice — is the subject of “English,” a rich new play by Sanaz Toossi that opened on Tuesday at the Linda Gross Theater. Both contemplative and comic, it nails every opportunity for big laughs as its English-learning characters struggle with accents and idioms. But the laughter provides cover for the deeper idea that their struggle is not just linguistic.
Keep Reading
Unraveling the Secrets of the Self Through ‘English’
I feel different when I speak English. In middle school, we had a “wai jiao”, a foreign guest teacher who’d come hang out with us a few times a year: Canadian Stephen (he pronounced it steh-fun) had dirty blond hair and frequent stomach problems. Stephen described English as “simple, and elegant.” For me, it was […]
Read More
We Don’t Want What ‘The Music Man’ is Selling
If there’s one thing this revival of The Music Man has it’s fanfare. Both literal (a marching band played outside the theater on opening night) and figurative: since this production was announced it has been loudly heralded as a major moment for Broadway, best signaled by the comically large marquee that adorns the roof of […]
Read More