Infinite Life (play)

Infinite Life is a play by Annie Baker which premiered in 2023.

Infinite Life was slated to premiere in 2021 but opened in 2023 at the Atlantic Theater Company, in a production prepared in collaboration with the National Theatre of London, which is where the show continued its run after leaving the Linda Gross theater in New York. The play is a bout five women – four of them are in their 60s, one is 47 – staying at a health retreat in northern California. The play shows their interacation during various treatments and wellness programs. There is one minor role for a man. As The Guardian's reviewer summarized, "by wrapping up their discomfort in language and submitting to treatment meted out by the overseeing doctor [...], the women can liberate themselves by starving and articulating away their pain."^[1] Writing for The New York Times, Darryn King stated that it "is a play about the experience of pain — our own and each other’s. “Infinite Life” also goes further than Baker's other plays in its exploration of stillness."^[2]

The critic for The Los Angeles Times wrote that " the accuracy of behavioral observation and the quality of empathy."^[3] Lauren Mechling ofThe Guardian called the play "often mesmerizing and undeniably audacious."^[1]