The Toronto Theatre Review: Coal Mine Theatre’s Infinite Life

By Ross

She enters, looks around at the row of lounge chairs that typically would be positioned on a pool’s edge, and makes her choice. In muted mustard, she starts to read a thick book about another woman making difficult choices, as a second makes her way in. Then, a third, until enough souls have arrived to fill almost every chair. The conversation starts up, slowly, authentically, in exactly the weird and wonderful way that playwright Annie Baker does to great effect. Injected inside Coal Mine Theatre‘s production of Infinite Life, these strangers have come together on their own, yet found themselves sitting in communion, not particularly for engagement, but out of a unifying inner personal need. This is ‘community’, one that exists separately, and brought on by a very personal desire to extinguish pain, that at first, Sofi, played with staring sharp brilliance by Christine Horne (That Theatre Company/Buddies in Bad Times’ Angels in America), is uncomfortable to share.

As directed with a gentle force by Jackie Maxwell (Arena Stage’s Junk), the tumbling out starts on the earth-toned deck of a repurposed motel in northern California, designed with clarity by set and costume designer Joyce Padua (CS’s Topdog/Underdog) with subtle shifting lighting by Steve Lucas (Coal Mine’s Appropriate) and sound by Olivia Wheeler (Soulpepper’s De Profundis). These characters, moving in and out of this precise framing, are inexplicably bound by their stories of pain and an intense personal litany of maladies and complications. It’s why they find themselves there, fasting and juicing themselves for days on end, throwing up toxins and feeling nauseous and dizzy, exhausted and enlivened, filled with hope and desperation.

Infinite Life excels in these complex interactions, brought out into sharp focus by an excellent cast that knows their stuff and how to deliver it with subtle straightforward ease; framings that are both comfortable and disquieting, yet always sound absolutely real, even when random and awkward. It’s a completely mesmerizing unwrapping of an audacious and assured play; funny, and heavy, with ailments and attachments shared with differing levels of acceptance and optimism.

Cancer, chronic pain, nerve pain, bladder pain, and vertigo are all laid out before us, drawing us down personal roads of involvement and disconnection. The psychosomatic and scientific collide and load up on each other, with descriptions that warrant this level of desperation. We connect with the pathos and poignancy that enter from the side doors to stare at the parking lot of a bakery and smell the enlivening aroma of bread. “You can’t tell me this isn’t a metaphor,” one of these characters says around their condition. Brought forth, and in these lounge chairs, we see our humanity breathing in the smell of life, while trying to figure out how to shed their personal pain.

Focusing in on the disquieting narrative of female suffering, with one hilariously injected silk pajama-wearing exception, played fascinatingly by Ari Cohen (CS’s Frost/Nixon), Infinite Life, which I sadly missed when it opened at the Atlantic Theater Company in a co-production with the National Theatre of London back in 2023, vibrates at a frequency that is fascinatingly authentic and wild, possibly brought on by the brain fog of those operating on almost zero calories for more days than I personally can imagine. It almost becomes something transcendent and hypnotic at times, as the navigation of pain is navigated out of the darkness and into the bright sunlight.

The cast shimmers with clarity and engagement in that sunlight as they spend their waking and almost awake hours with nothing to do and little focus beyond unpacking emotional trauma to strangers who can relate, somewhat, to what they are going through and trying to deal with. Nancy Palk (Tarragon’s Withrow Park) as the chronically nerve-pained Eileen resonates something profound in her silent hesitations and unsaid asks, with Brenda Bazinet (Factory’s End of Civilization) as Elaine; Jean Yoon (Soulpepper/Signature Center’s Kim’s Convenience) as Ginnie; and Kyra Harper (Soulpepper’s Copenhagen) as Yvette; finding their own unique masterful formulations to commiserate and connect in their awkward attempts of conversations, filled with shifts and pauses that hold our attention and give us details unspoken.

The conversations pushed forward by these five women and one man unfold with language that echoes the starved framework around articulating pain and the fundamental desire to eradicate it from their existence. Horne’s Sofi, is the arbitrator of time and its passing, a structural formulation that is the one thing that continually hiccups the unraveling time and time again. It’s a time bump that shortens rather than expands the horizon, taking us out for a moment, before asking us to join back in. There is a requirement there, delivering the endless hours passed by on those chairs staring into nothingness, but it sticks out as if from a different dimension, pinching us awake when a more subtle approach could have been more effective. Possibly.

But inside their contemplations, the play feels like a real and superbly honest trip, through a pain-induced identity crisis toward a fantasy revelation that unpacks itself in elevated tones and flavors. These souls, submitting to a starvation treatment delivered by an unseen doctor, whose name is invoked occasionally without layering ideas on top of all the other suggestions around pesticides, menopause, and microwaves, find some subtle or extreme liberation in their purposeful attack on their personal pain. The contours register strongly, as much as the hesitations and discomforts of engagement and sharing vulnerabilities laced with shame. Sip slowly, so as to not overwhelm your senses, as Baker’s play is undeniably relevant and extremely captivating. Expertly administered and supremely detailed in its thought and focus, Coal Mine Theatre‘s production of Infinite Life is fascinatingly layered with complex responses and emotional ties that linger inside and forever ring true.