Infinite Life, by Annie Baker, in a production directed by Jackie Maxwell, opened at Coal Mine Theatre last night.  It’s a play that has garnered acclaim in both London and New York.  It’s not hard to see why.  It’s the sort of play that perhaps appeals to theatre people (including critics) more than it does to the general public, though it’s not without wider appeal.  It requires great skill and precision to bring off precisely because nothing really happens.  There’s no narrative thread for a general audience to grasp.  That said it is remarkably effective on its own terms.

In essence it;’s quite simple.  It’s set in some sort of woo-woo health facility in (inevitably) California where people (predominantly women) go to take fasting cures for various more or less mysterious but debilitating ailments.  There are five women.  Four of them are elderly enough to consider the 47 year old Sofi a youngster.  There’s also a man, Nelson, whose occasional presence radically upsets the dynamics of the group.

The “action” unwinds over a period of 7-10 days on a sort of patio with sun-loungers where the women discuss their ailments, the progress of their fasting, their medical history and prognoses and their, generally unsatisfactory, relationships.  It’s very fragmentary but carefully timed.  A long description of some medical event; usually including vomiting or worse, will be interrupted by one of the women advancing a theory for why so many people get sick; pesticides, bad sex, cosmic background radiation and so on.  There’s a combination of uncomfortable explicitness and exquisite comic timing that can make the most apparently ghastly things laugh out loud funny.

Sofi, the “young” one is rather the outsider in what seems to be a network of established relationships among the older women and she’s the one who is most impacted by the disturbing appearances of Nelson.  She is in a sort of limbo.  She’s suffering from some sort of intensely painful bladder complaint and she’s separated from her sexually uninteresting husband who has discovered her, voice and text only “affair” with a colleague that is driven by Sofi’s more lurid sexual fantasies.  She comes to believe that the right man could “fuck the pain out of her”.  Is Nelson, with whose colon cancer she becomes obsessed, that man?  Or is there a more philosophical solution?  That’s kind of the cliff hanger ending.

This is not a play for the squeamish.  Vomit, shit, bile, colonoscopy photos, bladder sores, sphincters of various sorts, oral and anal sex all get a look in.  But it is brilliantly pulled off. Against a simple background of a row of loungers the women produce some really excellently timed comedy and, at times, real pathos.  Christine Horne’s Sofi holds centre stage.  Besides brilliantly creating the character of the rather complex Sofi she also functions as a kind of narrator.  The four older women; Yvette played by Kyra Harper, Elaine played by Brenda Bazinet, Eileen played by Nancy Palk and  Ginnie played by Jean Yoon really do a great job of portraying people with a range of debilitating physical ailments and slightly weird obsessions.  Yoon is especially effective as the rather naive lesbian flight attendant with an uncanny ability to introduce a kooky theory at exactly the wrong moment.  Ari Cohen’s Nelson is appropriately disturbing.  He manages to project a potent masculine, physical and sexual presence that really is at odds with the previous prevailing mood.  The sexual chemistry with Horne is tangible and it really injects the tension the play needs.

All in all, Infinite Life is a complex exploration of pain and disease, what it does to people’s relationships, their sense of self and even their sense of time.  It also deals sympathetically with how people react when conventional medicine isn’t working.  It’s brought to life by clever, detailed direction and some great acting based, in large part, on precise timing.  There’s a lot to admire and a surprisingly large amount to enjoy.

Infinite Life runs at Coal Mine Theatre until September 29th.

Photo credits: Elena Emer