Infinite Life – National Theatre, London

Writer: Annie Baker

Director: James Macdonald

Annie Baker seems to have taken up a form of residency at the National’s Dorfman Theatre, Infinite Life being the award-winning American writer’s fourth play to be staged at the venue since 2016. In style, this new work has much in common with the first of these plays, The Flick, in which a group of lonely strangers gather in a near-empty cinema. Here, five women patients in a California hospital chatter mundanely while reflecting on mortality and the even worse alternative, infinity.

The middle to old aged women bask on sun loungers, always fully clothed, as day turns to twilight, to night and then back to day. Baker does not burden the play with a narrative or detailed backstories for the characters. There can be no spoilers because nothing of note happens. As in The Flick, the writer is never afraid to empty the stage, nor to plunge it into darkness. Pauses in sound and vision are as potent as her words in conveying a sense of the unstoppable progress of time, which is the play’s hidden charter.

The play begins with Sofi (Christina Kirk) ploughing through a copy of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda before her reading is interrupted by the arrival, one by one, on the sun deck of Eileen (Marylouise Burke), Yvette (Mia Katigbak), Ginnie (Kristine Nielsen) and Elaine (Brenda Pressley). They exchange pleasantries, discuss their ailments and display all the awkwardness of strangers being thrown together by circumstance. Baker extracts the play’s humour, and there is plenty of it, not from jokes, but from quirkiness and recognisable human traits.

As the drama moves slowly along on a straight track, the only twist comes with the unexpected arrival of a partly-dressed man, Nelson (Peter Simpson), who is being treated for colon cancer. Sofi, who has already declared that bad health results from bad sex, shows an interest in him which leads, hilariously, to a weird flirtation in near-total darkness apart from the glow from Nelson’s mobile ‘phone as he shares his explicit selfies.

The acting in director James Macdonald’s deliberately pedestrian production is tuned to perfection. The combined work of set designer dots and lighting designer Isobella Byrd creates a sort of purgatory where normal life is temporarily suspended, part sun-drenched paradise and part nightmarish darkness. It is inhabited by six people who are together but alone, reaching out for something that may never be attainable.

Poignantly, Infinite Life sets up a mirror in front of the audience and what we see in it is slightly ridiculous, but, ultimately, touching. Is it worthwhile setting aside 105 minutes of our non-infinite lives to spend them in the company of these dull and uninteresting people? Actually, it is.

Runs until 13 January 2024