Infinite Life (National Theatre) London Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (9)
See it if You like Annie Bakers style of writing and an intimate look at some interesting characters.
Don't see it if You want plot. This is very character focused
See it if You like slow, quiet simple performances.
Don't see it if If you want something high energy.
See it if you like slow-burn and resonant plays which will leave you thinking about the intersection of pain and desire.
Don't see it if you do not have the patience for philosophising and need lots of action.
See it if You are a fan of minimalist slow theatre about mundane everyday happenings and patient observations. Like sitting by an ageing relative.
Don't see it if You need big-budget spectacle or overwrought dramatic monologues. Everything about this production is restrained and understated.
See it if Dont
Don't see it if Dont see it Read more
See it if You want to see if you can spot why quite a few critics loved it. Blowed if I could. Great acting but script not the promised profound jewel
Don't see it if You don’t like a glacial pace, long pauses, non sequiturs etc. Quite a few walkouts. I stuck it out but can’t say I enjoyed it.
See it if you enjoy theatre that does nothing and goes nowhere, just people complaining for 105 minutes.
Don't see it if you enjoy theatre, at one point I counted 10 audience members asleep Read more
See it if Fantastically slow burning- dialogue pitch perfect, but the pauses just as resonant.
Don't see it if You like lots of bells and whistles, or fast paced drama
Critic Reviews (9)
“James Macdonald’s understated production is exquisitely acted and contains a late contender for the year’s best line.”
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"Baker teases us with the prospect of a romantic – or raunchy – twist, the possibility of carnality lunged-at as an improvised remedy, but then moves on into terrain more stoical, stirring and subtly complex."
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“Baker cleverly keeps sentimentality at bay throughout...Baker’s women are the real thing — complex and contradictory.”
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“This is a terrific play, understated yet rich, utterly engrossing.”
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“It’s possible to take Infinite Life on purely satiric grounds: as a skilful anatomy of a heath-obsessed society conditioned toward hypochondria. And it’s certainly true that I left the auditorium wondering whether a visit to my GP was overdue...and James Macdonald – a proven expert with the work of both dramatists – keeps this magnificent play light on its feet even as it careens headlong into darkness.”
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“Baker’s latest work...is an absorbing meditation on pain, mortality and our ambivalent relationship with our bodies. In a sensitive production by James Macdonald with a woozy, heat-haze atmosphere, it is quietly riveting and stealthily moving.”
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“This brilliant play is full of such small wonders: gentler echoes of the miracle cure that each patient longs for, in vain.”
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"'Infinite Life,' is alive with meaning and our metaphor detectors start buzzing: is this little world going to stand in for the wider world and the frailty of the human condition, or is it a comic slice-of-life about kooky Americans obsessed with health? It’s sort of both, never belabouring its potential for the metaphorical, yet rising far beyond its sitcom-ish set-up."
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