13th Play - Infinite Life by Annie Baker
Christina Kirk (Sofi), Kristine Nielsen (Ginnie), Brenda Pressley (Elaine) and Mia Katigbak (Yvette) in the Atlantic Theatre Company’s NYC production in 2023. Photo: Marc Brenner
A play with mostly women? Yes! Mostly women over 40? Even better. That is rare! Where the characters sit or lie in chairs the majority of the time because they are in too much pain? Wait, what? Okay, less exciting. Damn. I’m striking out with some of my known playwrights. Annie Baker is a good playwright - she has a Pulitzer for crying out loud. This one was just … not that interesting to me. It’s very slow with little action, which I think is intentional. So, some people loved it, but some fell asleep, apparently.
Summary: “Five women in Northern California sit outside on chaise lounges and philosophize. A surprisingly funny inquiry into the complexity of suffering, and what it means to desire in a body that’s failing you.” Concord Theatricals
Laura’s thoughts in brief: For the record, several of the reviews agreed with me, somewhat. If a new playwright had written this, I don’t think it would be getting the attention it received. But that’s the joy of being a well-known (and Pulitzer prize-winning) writer - people give you more chances, and dig deeper into a play they might have just called boring. Don’t get me wrong, the characters are interesting and the physical issues they are and have been dealing with are terrible, and make you feel awful for them. They don’t always feel awful for themselves, though, which is nice. They do the best they can, which is, I guess the woman’s way.
One thing that felt odd to me was how the character of Sofi was so focused on sex as a way to deal with her pain, even though she noted that sex was quite painful with her condition. Now, I always appreciate an overtly sexual woman (especially not the trope version, which she is DEFINITELY not), but it just felt … strange to me. Maybe that’s my own hangup - not wanting to think about sex and pain together. Her desperation for sex just felt unusual. But I’ve never been in that much constant pain - I imagine you’ll try just about anything, and maybe sex is one of those things. It just seemed a bit out of the blue, although I believe the playwright wanted to focus on sexuality in a physically compromised body, based on the summary above.
There is humor in this play, and the play also goes deep. I suspect there are also some giant metaphorical type things that I am missing. Even the literature characters are reading was chosen specifically, but I didn’t get all those references. (I read the reviews which educated me a bit on that, which is how I know now.) But if I didn’t get the literary references, how much of the audience does? Definitely some, but enough? The play felt like it was targeted at a particular audience - literarily (this is actually a word, although not used frequently. I actually wanted to create the word literaturgically in this moment - it’s more dramatic!) high brow fans of Baker’s slow and seemingly uneventful style. It certainly didn’t appeal to me as a potential target audience of over 40 female. Watching all those people in pain do … very little … just is not really how I want to spend an evening in the theatre. But that’s me.
The play did have some subtle commentary about the “healing spa” trends in the country. The women were all obsessed with the doctor who prescribed fasting and juice to help them ease their pain. I definitely was skeptical of this doctor (who doesn’t actually appear in the play), as he seemed like a bit of a money-grubber to me. But again, at a certain point, one might try anything, so I can’t blame them, and some of them really seemed to respond to that particular treatment. Who’s to say? I do think that Baker wants us to question that though.
Anyway, although I could play a few of these characters, and it might be more interesting to perform than to watch (so I won’t write it off), I’m less excited about doing this one. As a director, I feel like I would be so limited in the amount of movement I could have the actors do … I’m just not sure this is for me to direct. Overall, well-written, if not the most interesting play, in my opinion.
READ MORE! Here’s what some of the critics had to say about productions:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/theater/infinite-life-review.html
https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/ob/09_12_23.html
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/sep/13/infinite-life-play-review-annie-baker-atlantic-theater