'I said no one should ever try to recreate this. This is agony in its purest form.'
Five women in Northern California lie outside on chaises longues and philosophise. But can you ever communicate what it feels like to be inside your own body?
Annie Baker's play Infinite Life is a surprisingly funny inquiry into the complexity of suffering, and what it means to desire in a body that's failing. It was first produced in a co-production between the National Theatre, London, and Atlantic Theater Company, New York, and performed at both theatres in 2023, directed by James Macdonald.
'A great new play. It peeps at the greatest mysteries of life'
— The New York Times
'The peerless Annie Baker's latest play is a mind-bending exploration of sex, pain and bodies... Infinite Life is a lucid fever dream, a trippy vision of profound truth... It is another extraordinary play from a writer seemingly capable of nothing else'
— Time Out
'Exquisite and bleakly funny'
— The Times
'Superb... Infinite Life is that rarest of things – a comedy about death and pain, written with such precision it seems to expose the workings of the heart... a terrific play, understated yet rich, utterly engrossing'
— WhatsOnStage
'Extraordinary... meticulous and mighty... a critique can't capture it: you have to be there'
— Observer
'A play like no other... I don't know how Annie Baker does what she does. I only know that she does it brilliantly'
— Daily Express
'Quietly riveting and stealthily moving... an absorbing, compassionate meditation on pain, mortality and our relationship with our bodies... Annie Baker's extraordinary plays are as idiosyncratic as they are fascinating and as funny as they are profound'
— The Stage
