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I had simply reached the realization that one day, I would no longer exist.
How incommensurate with our small, breakable animal bodies this awful, awesome notion, the infinite.
The play unfolds gently, gradually, through implication and deceptively casual conversation.
The energy from the Big Bang has been radiating throughout the universe for millions of years.
Look at the title another way, and the view is more chilling.
Bakers characters are all residents at an unnamed water fasting clinic somewhere north of San Francisco.
They are all there because they are in chronic, indescribable pain.
A Homeric catalogue of misery.
Its like the center of a blowtorch.
Its also like throbbing.
Its like endless throbbing like throb throb throb throb like tick tock tock endless into infinity time.
I remember thinking … this is a nightmare.
But Sofi moans the same words This is a nightmare.
Im living in a nightmare.
I havent put a dutiful adjective in either of the above parentheticals.
Thats because the ensemble ofInfinite Lifeis, across the board, wildly good.
Eight hours after that.)
But harmonizing with Kirks are five performances of equal force and elegance.
They are like exhausted actors: too tired for armor, too tired to avoid truth.)
And as the logical, unfaze-able Yvette, Katigbak is properly hilarious in a nature-versus-nurture debate with Ginnie.
This is part of Bakers brilliance: to ruffle feathers with the calmest of breezes.
Exit, house left, aggressively.
How marvelous, that theater can still offend!
How sad and strange and fascinating and marvelous?
that it should offend by conversing calmly about painful truths.
In other words that the pain is a lie …
The belief in matter and not spirit.
But Im not saying Idontbelieve it anymore.
Eileen goes on, unblinking:
I said terrible things …
I said none of you have ever been in this much pain …
I said its a conspiracy.
I said Ginnie youre doing it wrong.
I said Sofi go away.
I said, Youre all useless to me.
I said …
A minute of this is an infinity.
I guess if it means anything at all, I dont know if I can bear it.
Theyre out there … Perhaps they are.
Infinite Lifeis at the Atlantic Theater Company through October 14.
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