RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date
English
The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon
WITH language at the centre of current battles, not only with gender identity issues but also within our phoney culture wars, Iranian-American dramatist Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play arrives in Britain spot on cue.
Set in an Iranian TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) classroom, a mixed group of four adult students engage with their linguistic struggles under the demands of their enthusiastic anglophile teacher who insists they communicate only in English.
Family issues and dragon-fuelled history amount to a vacuous spectacle that ill-fits the theatre, muses SIMON PARSONS
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring
GORDON PARSONS is blown away by a superb production of Rostand’s comedy of verbal panache and swordmanship


