Carrie Coon, Jennifer Engstrom, Steve Key, Namir Smallwood (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
Bug
By David Schultz
Tracy Letts’ bullet train of a play, Bug, has moved to Broadway from a more modest run in its 2004 Off-Broadway debut. Twenty years ago, this intense play was both insanely entertaining and extremely disturbing; playing in a small, intimate house back then, it was claustrophobic and eerie.
Now presented in a much larger venue, Bug has lost some of its intimacy. The raw bones of the plot still remain, but the overall feeling has somewhat been softened. Although it starts somewhat slowly — the first act is full of much-layered foreshadowing — its wild, intensely bloody second act packs quite a wallop.
Agnes (Carrie Coon) portrays an occasionally drug-addled waitress who lives in a motel in the dusty outskirts of Oklahoma City. She is grieving the loss of her young son, who was abducted in a supermarket. Ostensibly to cheer her up, Agnes’s gal pal R.C. (Jennifer Engstrom) introduces a new acquaintance, Peter (Namir Smallwood). Peter’s Gulf War veteran backstory and history hang heavy over his slowly unraveling mind. He’s intensely paranoid; government conspiracy theories run rampant in his mindset, commingling with a wild sense of bug infestation. The bugs manifest in his head, then his body, later in actuality (maybe), in the motel room when he meets Agnes.
Carrie Coon, Namir Smallwood (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
Agnes gets frequent, unnerving phone calls from her ex-husband Jerry (Steve Key). Jerry was recently paroled and is on the hunt to reconnect with her, with nefarious, malicious intent to harm her when he shows up at the motel. Peter seems, at first to be kinder and a safe haven from her troubled past, yet his delusion that an international cabal has been implanting biochips inside humans to track and control the populace incrementally take hold in his mind, then Agnes’s. Then of course the bug infestation, real or imagined, appears.
Playwright Letts was rather prescient in writing about paranoid conspiracy theories way before similar ones took hold of the consciousness of the populace. The current state of affairs sees this sort of maniacal idea forming a certain mental slant for a large subset of the American zeitgeist. Twenty years ago, things like QAnon or AI psychosis seemed quaint and vaguely sci-fi. Knowing where we are today adds gravitas to the paranoia mindset as the play progresses to an almost comical and exaggerated conclusion.
Atypical of the usual fare on Broadway, rather than pulling punches, this carnival of horror stays true to its demented heart. The play is crammed with excessively violent scenes. The mounting sense of dread reaches its apex in the last ten minutes of the play. A mysterious character, Dr. Sweet (Randall Arney) who makes a late appearance, and who may be real, or figment of the main characters’ minds, meets a rather abrupt, violent demise.
The cast are all good, but the standout performance of Ms. Coon centers the work as she, in subtle gradations, loses her sense of reality, and goes fully off the wall as she ultimately commits to her relationship with Jerry.
Carrie Coon, Namir Smallwood (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
Director David Cromer has an assured hand with this carnival of mirrors funhouse. Equally impressive, scenic designer Takeshi Kata creates a virtual letterboxed environment in the early going, then opens up the stage to a larger, tin–foiled room (to block out the government signals, of course); cans of Raid, flypaper hanging from the ceiling, and bug zappers galore issuing an eerie blue glow create visual chaos to match the characters’ craziness. Lighting design by Heather Gilbert captures the visual heat that transpires within the show. Garish lighting in the final scenes mirrors the madness that infests these two lost souls, and deep red light gives a hint to the conflagration to follow. Costumes by Sarah Laux perfectly capture the dreary look of the cast.
Not a night out for timid theatergoers, nonetheless the itchy, disturbing Bug stays with you long afterward. If you’re adventurous, it could shake you up in a good way.
Bug
At the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes, one intermission
Through March 8th
