Annie Baker’s latest play is about women. It’s a deeply insightful, gloves-off look at pain, disabilities, female friendship and unresolved sexuality as Baker drip-feeds dialogue through at a snail’s pace, reflecting the languid speed of her characters, who shuffle about the patio of a health spa somewhere in northern California, where fasting is pitched as the answer to all ailments from colonic cancer to urinary tract infections. The list goes on.
In Infinite Life, like her other plays (The Flick, John, The Antipodes), Baker peers deeply down the well of uncertainty through everyday banter and outwardly mundane tasks, picking out the bizarre and intricate details of human relationships and behaviour through the simplest of observations. Here, books are often the trigger for women to talk about their lives, insightfully revealing truths and painful expositions.
Action opens onto a motel-style breeze block patio opposite a bakery, where the smell of fresh-baked bread wafts over, torturing the guests. A women slouches low on a sun lounger flicking through George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. Then, over the course of days, the other guests join her, splayed out on deckchairs, clutching green juice or water bottles, facing us directly, squinting at the sun (blindingly bright stage lights), sometimes saying nothing, sometimes emitting endless monologues while others listen in.
Yvette (Mia Katigbak) reads a memoir about a woman with Lyme disease who starts a white-water rafting company. Ginnie (Kristine Nielsen) wants to find the answer to an existential question proposed in her paperback by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Elaine (Brenda Pressley) frantically scribbles in her colouring book. Eileen,(Marylouise Burke) is in too much discomfort to read, but is gently curious about the other women.
Who thought pain could be funny and sexy? But as daily conversation flows, this appears to be what makes gruesome physical reality bearable. Take Yvette, who delves so deep into her medical report, it’s nothing short of a war zone, and then there’s her second cousin who “narrates pornography for blind people”.
Or Sofi (Christina Kirk) “with an f” who talks in-depth about the relationship to her pain and sexuality from boils up her bladder to where she sticks her taco chips. As the youngest guest, it's through Sofi's comical nightly mobile voicemails that we mostly learn about her life: her separated husband, her lover and what they would do to each other, but they never realise their fantasies beyond phone sex.
Time in the play is mostly narrated through Sofi. “Five hours later,” she says, or “the next day.” And so the play moves forward. Sometimes, a few minutes are skipped over and we’re into a deep philosophical discussion. At other points, markers of time are indicated by actions: Eileen kindly slinging a sunhat on Sofi or Nelson coming out for a smoke.
Feeling the heat of the sun and stories slowly accumulating, we piece together enough about the other women in the play to understand that deeply troubled waters lie close to the surface. Sometimes, we just watch them sleep. Other times, the women reach out to support one another. There's real pathos in watching how the women begin to care for one another as they constantly check in to see how the treatment is taking hold. “How are you feeling and “what day are you on," in terms of their fasting plans.
The cast are all superb. Each performance is lovingly crafted. James Macdonald's minimal, scaled-back production is so delicately acted both physically and emotionally, we believe in these characters' predicaments as those hilarious lines rip through the pain infectiously. Perhaps one of the most eccentric encounters is the relationship between Sofi and Nelson. Nelson, the only male patient, ambles about shirtless, trying to appear enigmatic, yet available for sex at the same time—he proudly shows Sofi a phone pic of his colon as a means of seduction. “Do you want more cancer or less cancer,” he asks her, totally deadpan.
Infinite Life shines a light on pain, but there’s something more going on than just being offered a chronicle of ill health. The real depth of the play comes from building relationships between the women and the outpouring of personal stories, from sexual desire to vulnerabilities wrapped in loneliness and jokes. The close connection that Sofi and Eileen find in one another, bridging the vast generational gap, makes for a bittersweet final scene that brings this powerful play to a surprisingly positive close.