Bug

By: Darryl Reilly

Breeziness morphs into queasiness during this emotionally overwhelming revival of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts’ Oklahoma-set underclass drama Bug. Vodka is guzzled; cocaine is snorted and smoked as is marijuana in a motel room while the shattering and mind-blowing conclusion is reached.

44-year-old Agnes White is a morose cocktail waitress who spends much of her off-time getting high at the motel she lives in. Nine years ago, her six-year-old son disappeared from a supermarket cart while she briefly left him to get an onion.

Agnes’ brutish ex-husband Jerry Goss shows up after a two-year prison stint to cause trouble. Her lesbian best friend Ronnie, a biker fellow waitress regularly visits to party with Agnes. Ronnie shows up one night with a customer from the nightclub, the softspoken 27-year-old Gulf War veteran Peter Evans.

He and Agnes bond during bouts of imbibing and drug taking; a romance develops. This proves complicated as Peter becomes convinced that the motel room is infested with aphids, sap-sucking plant lice which he believes are attacking them.

Mr. Letts’ wild scenario starts out as a bittersweet comedy and skillfully evolves into a dark, paranoiac, and violent psychological exploration. We are in the universes of Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Letts’ richly delineated everyday American characters converse in his heightened dialogue which contains sharp observations about the mundane and the fantastical. A dynamic cast portray his troubled souls.

Carrie Coon is awesome as Agnes. With her expressive voice, lithe physicality, and luminous stage presence Ms. Coon achieves a poignant and supreme turn as this downtrodden tragic figure. The athletic and magnetic Namir Smallwood’s initial soulfulness as Peter veers to ferociousness as his mental condition disintegrates. Mr. Smallwood offers a haunting characterization. Coon and Smallwood have an intense and sensual rapport; they appear nude together several times in dimness. This necessitates compelling the audience to place their smart phones in locked pouches to prevent picture taking during the presentation.

Burly, drawling, and beaming Steve Key is simultaneously menacing and charming as Jerry. Mr. Key is most hilarious and chilling when rationalizing punching his ex-wife. The animated and alluring Jennifer Engstrom is a delightfully feisty Ronnie. Sunny and droll Randall Arney makes an eerie impression as the enigmatic physician Dr. Sweet who pops up to provide clarity.

Besides guiding his exuberant cast, director David Cromer employs inspired stagecraft emphasizing the play’s aching resonance combined with arresting visual imagery, gorgeous tableaus, and entrancing compositions. Altercations and sexual situations are realized by intimacy coordinator and fight director Marcu Watson with blazing precision.

Scenic designer Takeshi Kata’s detailed motel room is of claustrophobic authenticity and becomes creepier when wacky embellishments are added as the two central characters mentally spiral downward.

Heather Gilbert’s swirling lighting design shifts from stark brightness to ominous dark hues for striking results. Sound designer Josh Schmidt’s clear rendering of musical bits, sirens, and other effects accentuate the mounting sense of dread. Costume designer Sarah Laux’s downscale garments individualize each character with realism and a sense of the past.

Bug premiered in London in 1996. Its successful Off-Broadway debut was in 2004. William Friedken directed the 2006 film adaptation starring Ashley Judd as Agnes and Micheal Shannon as Peter, he previously had appeared in several stage incarnations in that role.

This transfer of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of Bug by the Manhattan Theatre Club is its Broadway premiere. It affirms the play’s stature as a major work of dramatic literature and is a stimulating and wrenching theatrical experience.

Bug (through February 22, 2026)
Manhattan Theatre Club
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, visit www.manhattantheatreclub.com
Running time: two hours including one intermission