Theatre review: Infinite Life

From the writer who brought you three hours of vacuuming popcorn out of a carpet comes two hours of pensioners sitting on sun loungers talking about their bladders: America's queen of low-key experimental theatre Annie Baker makes another return visit to the Dorfman with Infinite Life - James Macdonald's premiere production for Atlantic Theater Company in New York comes over with US cast intact, as Sofi (Christina Kirk) spends ten days (or thereabouts... her precise memory of her time there can get hazy) at a quasi-mystical fasting retreat in Northern California. People, mostly women, go there for extreme pain, life-threatening diseases or both, and if you believe Yvette (Mia Katigbak) the unseen doctor's combination of starvation diets and juice drinks have had miraculous healing results.

Feeling physically exhausted but mentally keen from the therapy, when the women aren't actually asleep they're usually on the loungers, taking in the views of the car park and making conversation when they feel up to it.

Ginnie (Kristine Nielsen) starts philosophical discussions she then can't keep up with; Elaine (Brenda Pressley) lives by a mish-mash of philosophies and has a radioactive cat; days turn to nights and back again as Yvette tells tales of her various ailments; and Christian Scientist Eileen (Marylouise Burke) has to excuse herself if the conversation turns too sexual. Speaking of which, Sofi thinks sole male patient Nelson (Pete Simpson) may be able to fuck the pain out of her. If he doesn't turn out to be a hallucination.

And thoughts of sex do come round quite often - inasmuch as you can ever pin down an Annie Baker play this one's about living with chronic pain but still being horny. But it inevitably circles round wider themes of aging (at 47 Sofi is considered the baby of the group) particularly for women. Baker's plays tend to balance themselves somewhere between hyperrealism and surrealism - Infinite Life leans more towards the former, although we're warned not to take it too literally: Sofi is narrating this, sometimes informing us how many hours or days the action has skipped forwards, sometimes confessing her memory might be putting the words into the wrong woman's mouth.

The sudden changes in Isabella Byrd's lighting when these time jumps take us from night to day are about as dramatic as the action gets, but once again Baker has a knack for making the time fly past while seemingly doing little - the first time I checked my watch we were already more than halfway through. It's not quite Pinteresque, but a different kind of signature mood of quiet intensity, surprisingly funny moments and a sense that you're almost, but not quite, getting a grip on what's going on, without that being frustrating. Another quietly weird, quietly satisfying entry in this successful relationship with the Dorfman.

Infinite Life by Annie Baker is booking until the 13th of January at the National Theatre's Dorfman.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.