Manhattan Theatre Club is presenting the first Broadway production of Tracy Letts’ acclaimed play Bug. The Broadway premiere of sci-fi thriller is directed by Tony Award winner David Cromer. Read reviews for the production!
Bug stars three-time Emmy Award nominee and Tony Award nominee Carrie Coon as Agnes White, Namir Smallwood as Peter Evans, Randall Arney as Dr. Sweet, Jennifer Engstrom as R.C., and Steve Key as Jerry Goss.
From Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts and Tony Award-winning director David Cromer comes the Broadway premiere of Steppenwolf’s acclaimed staging of a cult classic about an unexpected and intense romance between a lonely waitress (Carrie Coon) and a mysterious drifter (Namir Smallwood).
What begins as a simple connection between two broken people in a seedy Oklahoma motel room twists into something far more dangerous. When reality slips out of grasp, paranoia, delusion, and conspiracy take over in this sexy psychological thriller.
Adam Feldman, Time Out New York: Although Agnes and Peter sleep together early on, their relationship isn’t primarily sexual. But there’s an element of seduction to their whole dynamic, as Peter, at first reluctantly, gets under Agnes’s skin. Letts is an actor as well as a playwright—he and Coon, who are married, met while co-starring in a revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—and he knows how to craft scenes that keep performers intensely engaged with each other onstage. Smallwood and Coon, reprising their roles from the 2021 production of Bug at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, strike a compelling balance. He arrives full of secrets that he gradually reveals; she arrives empty and eager to swallow them up, spiraling ever farther away from life beyond her room. (In several ways, this role is like the flip side of the steadfast mother Coon played so indelibly in Mary Jane.)
Roma Torre, New York Stage Review: It’s the same excellent cast from Steppenwolf’s production in Chicago five years ago. But it feels even more relevant now. America’s history of conducting secret experiments on unwitting human guinea pigs planted ample seeds of doubt about our institutions. And today that distrust has only metastasized amid the acute madness of social media-fueled disinformation. Letts cites Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh as inspiration for the play. It’s terrifying to consider how many more are out there.
Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: When Bug was first seen Off-Broadway in 2004, it seemed prescient in its portrayal of mental illness and conspiracy theories. Now — after the world has gone collectively crazy with wacky notions about COVID, pedophile rings, vaccines, and 5G, among countless other things — Tracy Letts’ play practically feels quaint. Receiving its Broadway premiere in a Manhattan Theatre Club production in association with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, it nonetheless remains a grippingly unnerving thriller that feels like a waking nightmare.
Average Rating:
86.7%
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