THE PRIMARY ENGLISH CLASS
That is what The Primary English Class is all about, and that is why I found it so funny. The play is a nightmare of misunderstanding. Five students show up for a basic English class. Each one speaks a different language–Italian, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese–and no one understands a word of any other language. (The audience knows what they’re saying because two offstage translators who sound like a couple of language-instruction tapes provide the translations.) The janitor speaks only Polish, and the teacher speaks only English.
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The Primary English Class is similar to another Horovitz play called Line, still being done by the Inn Town Players. Also a thin comic sketch rooted in absurdity, Line shows the hostility, deception, and cruelty that erupt in a group of people standing in line for tickets. Line suggests that people are so selfish and mean that amiable relations are impossible. The Primary English Class exaggerates the difficulty of communication. Taken together, they make Horovitz look like a misanthropic curmudgeon who doesn’t have much use for human nature except, mercifully, as an abundant source of comic material.
