Live and in person at the Coal Mine Theatre, Toronto, Ont. Playing until Oct. 6, 2024.
Written by Annie Baker
Directed by Jackie Maxwell
Set and costumes by Joyce Padua
Lighting by Steve Lucas
Sound by Olivia Wheeler
Cast: Brenda Bazinet
Ari Cohen
Kyra Harper
Christine Horne
Nancy Palk
Jean Yoon
Annie Baker’s latest play, Infinite Life, is challenging since the silences, pauses and side-long looks are as important as the dialogue. It’s a play about blind faith, trust and camaraderie. Annie Baker makes you look, see and listen.
The Story. Five women and one man have come to a healing spa in Northern California to fast in order to cure their constant pain. The source of the pain and the intensity of it is individual to each person, but there is a sense of competition among the participants as to who is suffering the most. They all have faith in the elusive Dr. Urken that his prescribed process of fasting, drinking only water or juice in a few cases, will cure their cancer, mysterious ailments and various reasons for the pain. For some this is a repeat visit when their illness returns.
The Production. Jackie Maxwell’s direction is scrupulous in adhering to playwright Annie Baker’s languid, slow pace. As the participants fast over several days, the pace gets incrementally slower because they are weaker. It is so beautifully subtle and real.
Joyce Padua’s set of several pastel blue lounge chairs set against a pastel peachy coloured wall with lush foliage above, sets us in sunny California. The chairs are obviously outside where the various women and the man come out to lounge on the lounge chairs, sleep and feel the warm sun on their skin. Joyce Padua’s costumes a variation on sweat pants with a stylish scarf etc. for a little flamboyance. One gets that warm sun sensation from Steve Lucas’ lighting, and the facial expressions of the various loungers. It’s an expression that reflects the bright light and the position of the head is tilted to get the most of the warm sun.
Each character has their own battles with pain and their reasons for being there. Sofi (Christine Horne) is the first to enter the space. She has to cope with more than pain. Her marriage is in trouble—she keeps calling her husband, demanding, pleading he answer her texts, e-mails and messages. She also calls another person with a different tone—seductive, teasing, sexual. She is reading a thick book which turns out to be “Daniel Deronda” by George Eliot. I note that not only is there a book mark in the place she left off reading, but the page is also turned down. Anal? Meticulous? Playwright Annie Baker always gets one to think about everything. Is Sofi’s choice of book symbolic? Is she a stand in for Gwendolen, the heroine of “Daniel Deronda”? Hmmm.
Eileen (Nancy Palk) arrives next. She is obviously in pain. She walks slowly, almost limping. Later in the play as her pain worsens, she will use a cane. Eileen is gracious and welcoming. She greets Sofi and strikes up a conversation.
Elaine (Brenda Bazinet) and Ginnie (Jean Yoon) arrive with their own stories and disappointments. Yvette (Kyra Harper) arrives next with such an extensive litany of ailments, operations, physical challenges and the many and various drugs she’s on, that it’s comic relief. And Kyra Harper is so upbeat and also matter of fact that she plays Yvette with such optimism though the reality makes one’s eyebrows knit.
Nelson (Ari Cohen) is the only man and often appears when the others are nowhere in sight. He is laidback, perhaps from his extensive fasting or from the ‘weed’ he smokes as an aid.
The women bond over their shared experiences. They are concerned for each other. In one aching scene, Eileen says to Sofi that her sore hips are relieved when her legs are raised. Her husband raised her legs when she was home. Here Sofi sits on the ground in front of Eileen’s lounge chair, Sofi’s back to it, and elevates Eileen’s legs by positioning them on her shoulders. The look on Nancy Palk’s face (as Eileen) is blissfully at peace. As Sofi, Christine Horne is sensitive and caring when she holds Eileen’s legs still on her shoulders. As she holds them Christine Horne’s thumb strokes Nancy Palk’s ankle. Is that the character showing such compassion or is it the actress showing care to a colleague—and does it matter because it works so well for the scene?
The acting is wonderful and subtle. What is interesting as these characters go through this process together, is that one doesn’t question what is happening in the ‘therapy’ of the pain. Is this a scam of vulnerable people, desperate for a cure of their pain and this doctor Urken is starving the pain out of them through fasting? They don’t question it? But again, Annie Baker got me wondering.
Comment. Annie Baker challenges her audiences to stay the course with watching characters do seemingly ‘boring’ repetitive activities. In The Flick, her Pulitzer Prize winning play about an old-fashioned cinema, we watched sweepers slowly and methodically sweeping popcorn over the course of The Flick for several minutes at a time. Some dismissed it outright as boring, thus missing the subtle point. The sweeping illuminated the diligence and tenacity of the sweepers to do a responsible job for the place they loved.
In Infinite Life we are watching characters getting weaker and weaker from fasting (starving??) to cure their pain. The movement gets slower and slower from scene to scene. The conversation becomes more and more laboured, the voices weaker from the exertion of talking. We become invested in their lives and a hope for a cure. Challenging and compelling thanks to all involved. Typical Annie Baker.
The Coal Mine Theatre presents
Plays until Oct. 6, 2024.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes (no intermission)
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