Broadway Reviews Theatre Review by Howard Miller - January 11, 2026 Bug by Tracy Letts. Directed by David Cromer. Scenic design by Takeshi Kata. Costume design by Sarah Laux. Lighting design by Heather Gilbert. Sound design by Josh Schmidt. Hair and make-up design by J. Jared Janas. Dialect and vocal coach Gigi Buffington. Intimacy coordinator and fight director Marcus Watson. Artistic advisor Lynne Meadow.
This production, the first time Bug has appeared on Broadway, is buttressed by the sure hand of director David Cromer and features the same tight-knit cast who brought the play to life at Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre Company a few years back. Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood are giving exceptionally commanding performances in the lead roles of Agnes and Peter, whose casual meet-up gradually twists itself into a convergence of mental disintegration and unfettered destruction over the course of two hours.
It matters a great deal to have an actor-centric director like Cromer and a roster of performers who have been deeply immersed in this portraiture of rampant paranoia. Otherwise, you'd just wind up with a sustained rant, of which there is more than enough in the script itself to conjure up the play's real-life inspirations: Ted ("The Unabomber") Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh, the Gulf War vet and domestic terrorist responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, just one year before Bug premiered in a production in London. Both of these men are cited by name during the course of the play in case you don't make the connection yourself. Patience and a degree of watchful sleuthing for tidbits of foreshadowing will help you get through the generally subdued first act. We meet up with Agnes in the residential motel room where she lives on her own while holding down a steady job as a waitress at a roadhouse bar. Scenic designer Takeshi Kata has made this into a pleasant and clean space, like a small New York studio apartment. The noticeable lack of a television would seem to be Agnes's choice, as is her collection of pills, alcohol, and the cocaine that she sometimes shares with her friend R.C. (Jennifer Engstrom), who pops in from time to time. The one unsettling element comes into play through the repeated ringing of the telephone. No one speaks when Agnes picks it up, but she knows it is her ex-husband Jerry (Steve Key), who has just been released from serving a prison term and is already stalking her.
Thus ends Act I, and with it, any semblance of reality or sanity. The slow ascent to the top of the roller coaster ride is over. Act II is all about the twisty-turny plunge into the buggy abyss from which there can be no escape as the play's title takes on a world of meanings, entomological and otherwise. Rather like he would do with his later Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County, Letts drops the leash and allows his plotting and characters to go all-out nuclear. As the world upends and utter madness engulfs, we truly don't know if we are witnessing Peter's implosion or Agnes's crack cocaine-fueled breakdown, or some combination of both. We can't even be certain of the reality of the appearance once again of R.C., Jerry, and a new arrival on the scene who seems to know a great deal about Peter's past. "People can do things to you, things you don't even know about," Peter warns Agnes at one point. That is a truth that rings throughout the production, and it includes those of us in the audience as well. See it, and then go home and take a long hot shower. And above all, don't let the bed bugs bite!
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