Coal Mine Theatre/Infinite Life, written by Annie Baker, directed by Jackie Maxwell, Coal Mine Theatre, closes Oct. 6. Tickets here.
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Annie Baker is a current darling of American (and international) theatre, and for good reason. She focuses on the human condition, as all dramatists do, but in unusual ways.
For example, The Flick (2013) presented the under-achieving staff of an art house movie theatre. The Antipodes (2017) featured a competitive entertainment writers’ room. And in her latest play, Infinite Life (2023), currently running at Coal Mine Theatre, we meet desperate people at a northern California spa searching for a cure.
In all her plays, Baker presents seemingly ordinary people, and through their lives, we see ourselves. As one cultural guru said, Baker “has pioneered a style of theatre made to seem as untheatrical as possible”. Like an onion, however, peel away the layers and lurking therein, lies her provocative truth, her hidden agenda, as it were.
In the case of Infinite Life, (an ironic title if ever there was), Baker has taken on the insidious cult of wellness that is so pervasive in North American society.
The five women and one man at this spa are all dealing with intense pain. We learn that this location was once a low market highway hotel that overlooks a strip mall, and the modus operandi of the guru doctor (whom we never meet) is liquid-only fasting. In our heart of hearts, we know that the doctor is a charlatan of the first order taking advantage of people’s suffering.
The main character is Sofi (Christine Horne) who is 47, and the youngest. She is the one who announces the passage of time, and is almost always on stage. Elaine (Brenda Basinet), Ginnie (Jean Yoon) and Yvette (Kyra Harper) are older women who are repeaters at the spa. Eileen (Nancy Palk) is the oldest and the wisest. What a bonanza Infinite Life is for senior theatre artists.
The loan male Nelson (Ari Cohen) has cancer. He’s in the play to present alpha male, or to interrupt the smooth running of feminine society, or to inject overt sexuality. He says he doesn’t want to be a dick, but he is. His presence actually jars. He’s at this spa for a miracle, yet he will be starting chemotherapy in a few weeks, a bizarre combination indeed.
Joyce Padua’s set is a long line of lounge chairs against a stucco wall. Her clever costumes are character specific, and it all looks wonderfully real. Steve Lucas’ clever lighting follows the turn of the days. Against this backdrop, the women talk to each other, and so we see Baker’s brilliance in delineating character. Through idle conversation, we get to know who these women are, but we are always aware of their pain.
The women are tremendously sympathetic to one another. They talk about children and grandchildren, and pets, and hobbies, and work. They go off on tangents about the dangers of microwaves, and more benign topics like recommending books.
And sex.
There is a lot of talk about sex. They also discuss their ailments and medical science, which seems to have failed them. In one brief scene, one of them announces that there has been another school shooting, but generally, the real world and its problems are far away.
Sofi is a tortured soul. She has betrayed her husband and links her pain to punishment which pushes the play to a philosophical plane. Her interface with Nelson adds to her sexual confusion. She’s reading George Eliot’s 1876 masterpiece, Daniel Deronda, and that novel introduces another layer of provocation on the part of Baker. Why that book in particular? Is it because the heroine, Gwendolen, is self-centred and narcissistic to the extreme?
Director Jackie Maxwell has always been very strong in drawing out character, and she does a superb job with this play. The conversations are real and take place in real time. Nothing is forced, nothing is phony. Infinite Life is a triumph of character study in Maxwell’s accomplished hands.
Through a mix of humour and pathos, Baker has written a play about current American mores. My takeaway is anger at the wellness cult and those who take advantage of people’s suffering.
On the other hand, these women are in real pain, but through this pain, they find a support group. They are coping with life.
In a scene at the end between Sofi and Eileen, we see a real melding of togetherness, and it is beautiful to watch. Nonetheless, Infinite Life is a very troubling play about suffering and living with pain, and hoping for a miracle.
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