REVIEW: Infinite Life thrums with meditations on chronic illness and pain

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/By Ilana Lucas / Sep 15, 2024

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“You know, I’m usually a very healthy person,” confides 47-year-old Sofi (Christine Horne) to her deck-chair neighbour, as both women slowly endure a days-long fast to cleanse their body of mysterious, intolerable autoimmune pain. Ginnie (Jean Yoon), usually chatty but this time not picking up the conversational gambit, simply stares back, a slightly-quirked eyebrow doing all her talking. After a pause slightly too long for comfort, she gently asks:

“Why do you want me to know that?”

This stark, poignant question is characteristic of Annie Baker’s quietly devastating, loosely structured Infinite Life, a meditation on the isolating nature of chronic illness, agony that lingers without answers or reason. Director Jackie Maxwell’s production at Coal Mine Theatre, featuring six generous, empathetic performances, is a paean of understanding for the chronically ill, candidly examining the despair and fury of bodily helplessness in a way that’s magnified by our proximity to the characters in the intimate space.

In Baker’s 100-minute one-act, we meet Sofi and the older women around her, all of whom have come to a California clinic that promises to cleanse their ills with supervised fasting. A lone tree peeks over the adobe-hued walls of Joyce Padua’s set, which looks like a chic, exclusive retreat. Appearances can be deceiving, though, as characters remark that there’s a strip mall across the street from which food smells tantalizingly trickle in.

Everyone has a different condition and story, and in the communal space with its row of six reclined deck chairs, conversations about everything and nothing arise like sudden storms and get shockingly frank with little warning. “What kind of pain are you in?” is a typical conversation starter, and it’s always a winner; the pain is often all-consuming, and once a willing audience presents itself, the women speak about theirs as if through a broken, gushing faucet. Sofi, the last to arrive, enters into a community of women who seem to have known each other for years, despite it being days at most.

Elaine (Brenda Bazinet) believes in a conspiracy of pesticides in non-organic food and the way our environment changes our bodies; a health teacher, she’s been asked to give the puberty talk to younger and younger girls, and warns that “organically grown” is a label not to be trusted. Eileen (Nancy Palk), described as devoutly religious, quietly drags her stiff body off her seat while radiating displeasure to “go to the powder room” when talk gets too profane.

There’s Yoon’s friendly, eucalyptus-loving flight attendant, who poses uncomfortable philosophical questions from the book she’s reading (most of the women have brought books they can’t pay attention to because they’re starving), and Kyra Harper’s warm, motherly Yvette, whose bright eyes sparkle as she recounts her decision to have an internal organ removed, the lessening of pain and feeling of control from making the decision outweighing the lifelong consequences. Having little in common but their anguish, they nonetheless offer comfort and community, along with that sense of agency that all seem to desperately seek.

Each woman feels three-dimensional, their pain lived in and real, their humour a sardonic or sweet refuge. It’s a treat to watch five powerhouse actors simply come together and talk in any combination. With these conversations, Baker effectively explores age-old philosophical questions such as whether disease is some sort of punishment, especially if it affects areas normally devoted to pleasure. Subverting the usual narrative, Sofi bitterly admits that, contrary to the platitudes, illness didn’t suddenly make her a paragon of virtue, instead creating someone even worse.

In plays from The Flick to The Antipodes, Baker’s renown comes from her use of quiet moments that play out in real time, letting conversations and actions languidly unfurl to give audiences a sense of the slow but steady movement of life. She’s not afraid to stay in a silence, leaving us to scrutinize the actors’ expressions and body language: As Ginnie leisurely applies a full face of makeup, Sofi watches incredulously, the unspoken question of “who are you doing this for?” written in her eyes.

However, Infinite Life, unlike some of Baker’s other work, doesn’t take place in one shot, as the events encompass Sofi’s 8 or 10 or 11-day-long fast (she can’t remember). Sofi’s asides to the audience tell us whether things are happening 20 minutes or 20 hours later. These asides, rare breaks in the fourth wall, serve to keep us on track, but also mimic Sofi’s feelings of dislocation, as minutes or hours slip by and go missing via a combination of hunger, discomfort, and lack of connection with the outside world. We’re also briefly taken out of time for a moment with Eileen, in a captivating monologue about a night of pain no one wants to remember that Palk delivers with searing fervour, one of several standout scenes for the actor.

The asides, moments of lucidity and regulation as time falls away, are reminders of why the patients have come to a last-ditch clinic to try a last-resort cleansing: with all control removed in an act of ultimate bodily betrayal, the potential to take control overrides any objection.

Later on, the arrival of Nelson, the lone male, changes the dynamic to something less free and more guarded, more charged. Ari Cohen’s shirtless Nelson immediately takes over the space, stretching and spreading himself out in ways that scream casual ownership and make the women seem smaller. Yet he, too, is three-dimensional and suffering: his scenes with Sofi sizzle as she seethes with curiosity about the appearance of his colon and a sort of reluctant attraction to a man who actually understands what she’s going through.

In a story told by one of the women, her husband doesn’t believe her about his shouting problem until it’s confirmed by an outside source — not once, not twice, but three separate times. Infinite Life grapples with the concept of crying out and not being believed, and how it forever shakes one’s self-perception. I know every woman portrayed on that stage, and I was moved to tears by the play’s casual, blunt, but above all humane exploration of what can push a person to the brink of life and death, while forcing them to stay somewhere in between.

In a world where one is temporarily abled at best, it’s worthwhile to pull up a deck chair and listen.

Infinite Life runs at Coal Mine Theatre until September 29. Tickets are available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Ilana Lucas

Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.

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REVIEW: Infinite Life thrums with meditations on chronic illness and pain

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