Infinite Life is about five American women, all dumpling-shaped, who sit in a hotel garden observing a hunger strike. Some of them haven’t touched food for days, some for weeks. ‘Don’t be afraid to puke,’ counsels one of the dumplings. ‘Puking is good.’ They pass their afternoons wittering inanely about nothing at all. One dumpling is an air hostess, another works in banking, a third has a job as a fast-food executive. Or so they claim. Each of the dumplings might be lying to the others but it would make no difference because nothing connects them, and they have no stake in the situation other than the desire to burn up time.

It doesn’t feel like a play but a prank staged by psychologists

After a while it transpires that the dumplings are not hunger-strikers but weight-watchers hoping to cure their many ailments by fasting.