Broadway Review: Bug

Enough to Make Your Flesh Crawl
Bug is a creepy, engrossing thrill ride

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

Carrie Coon is a master at playing characters who dance close to the edge. Connecticut Voice readers will most likely know her from her portrayal of the nouveau riche Bertha Russell in HBO’s The Gilded Age. There, dressed in the opulent fashions of the Belle Epoque, Coon inhabits Bertha as she single-mindedly pursues her climb into the aristocracy—and will not be deterred. Yet, disaster is always one scandal away, and hyper-vigilant Bertha is always playing the angles, knowing the steep cost of failure.

As Agnes in the Broadway debut of Tracy Letts’ Bug, the edge she’s flirting with  is of a very different nature. Clad in a faded, liver-colored tank top and short cutoffs, Agnes is trying to hold onto her life in a dingy Oklahoma motel room where her divorced, abusive ex-con husband is after her and where she barely holds onto her subsistence living, while she drinks and does drugs.

In both these portrayals, Coon allows audiences to see into the depth of the characters and the underlying fear and anxiety that characterizes their lives—and never lets them rest. In her work,  Coon conveys so much so economically and draws us into the inner life of the characters with heart-wrenching precision. Beyond that, the two pieces couldn’t be more different. Well, unless one considers that Agnes and Bertha both live in a time of social upheaval where women have to fight for whatever power they get and that stories, whether factual or not, can cause one’s undoing.

Bug was first written and performed nearly thirty years ago, but it is almost chillingly relevant to today. One of the central themes is how conspiracy theories can take hold and cause widespread cultural (and on an individual basis, emotional) chaos. When Peter arrives in Agnes’ motel room, the Gulf War veteran is convinced that he is being used as part of a secret government testing program and is carrying bugs that will be used to control him. These bugs could then be transmitted to enemies around the world who would then be controlled. He must get rid of the bugs to stop this evil plan. While Agnes is initially skeptical, her loneliness and need for connection lead her to slowly believe Peter and then to passionately defend him, against all evidence that Peter is suffering from mental illness and that the bugs (aphids, Peter calls them) do not exist.

The genius of the play is the slow, yet persistent, transformation of Agnes into a zealot who shares Peter’s psychosis. The tragedy of the play is that she is so inherently fragile and vulnerable that she is easily swept up in the story, and the dramatic tension evolves from watching Agnes get lost in Peter’s story and knowing she won’t be saved. What looks like a life raft to her is ultimately revealed to be a depth charge.

One cannot encounter this play in 2025 without thinking of the sometimes-monumental conspiracy theories bandied around in fringe—and sometimes mainstream—media. From QAnon to the dark web, people upend their lives, their families, and their well-being because they’ve fallen under the sway of a story, however illogical it might be.  You or I might think things like The Rapture are ridiculous, but there are many who don’t and who are beyond convincing that they are wrong.

What Letts explores in Bug is the ways in which belief  in such delusions takes hold in the mind and the complex process of how a seemingly logical (if crackpot) narrative can overwhelm rational thought, how identities can be formed around those irrational beliefs, and the hold such beliefs hold on our psyches. At its most pervasive, every outside event is seen (twisted?) into corroboration of the operative story.  From there, it’s a short step to enrolling others in the conviction. In this vein, Bug can also be read as a cautionary tale.

The production, presented by Manhattan Theatre Club, is a transfer from the Steppenwolf Company in Chicago where it played last year. Under the direction of David Cromer, it’s a gripping balance of comedy and psychological thriller. The first act lags a bit, but this seems intentional—the dark comedy lulls the audience into thinking we’re in a Sam Shepard-like dysfunctional family drama before going completely off the rails in Act Two. As the pace and insanity ramps up, Coon as Agnes becomes increasingly unhinged, finally breaking in a gasp-inducing moment that shows how she has been transformed…and lost.

Coons is joined on Broadway by her Steppenwolf co-star Namir Smallwood as Peter. He gives an excellent and often understated performance of a man who is completely convinced of his story and who slowly convinces Agnes to join him in it as well.

Jennifer Engstrom gives a fine performance as R.C., Agnes’ friend who tries to rescue her from Peter and her delusions, but Agnes shuts her out. Steve Key plays Goss, Agnes’ ex-husband, and while the role as written leans a little obviously on the abusive husband narrative, Key is charming in the role, in a dangers way, and the character is, to some extent, redeemed when he wants to help when he sees how far-gone Agnes is.

What makes this play, and this production, work is that beyond all the extremity and grand guignol of the story, it’s ultimately a tale of a woman trying to find her way and hold on while things spin out of control and she is swept up in the vortex.

Bertha Russell would be able to relate.

Bug
Manhattan Theatre Club at The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
Tues, Fri  7 p.m.; Weds, Thurs, Sat 8 p.m.; Weds, Sat, Sun 2 p.m.
$99-$281 at Telecharge
2 hours, 15 mins, 1 intermission

Review published January 8, 2025
Photos courtesy of the production ©Matthew Murphy