BUG
by Tracy Letts
Directed by Dabid Cromer
Starring Carrie Coon and Ramir Smallwood
A Production of the Manhattan Theatre Club
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
I once knew a woman—maybe 20, 25 years ago—big hearted, but her heart seemed often very much that of a child…and she was prone to various delusions I dare not catalogue in print. For the period that she was a regular presence in my life, these delusions—unreal expectations—formed a mild pathology. You could be concerned for her…but she seemed to be making her way through the world ably.
Then she met this guy.
I won’t particularize him either. But let’s just say, his delusions were greater than hers, and manifested in sweeping schemes of epic grandeur. He saw in her a willing disciple. She got caught up in the whirlwind of his opportunism and began devoting her energies to supporting his loopy vision. And you couldn’t talk to her about it; or you could, sort of, but her response was this beatific certainty that, no, wait, just open your mind to this great thing I’m into, you’ll see how swell it is, you’ll see the truth of it… (I did see the truth, within two minutes of examining his website. It took her three years to extricate herself. But the good news is that she did. And I’ll leave it there.)
Hardly the only person I’ve known to willingly give control to another. At some point in life, in fact, usually when we’re young, naïve and still learning our way, we all trust the wrong person(s), a few times anyway, until our antennae get sharpened enough to recognize a pattern, and an adult survival instinct finally kicks in. But some people never develop those “muscles”—stay forever children, in that way, wanting to be led.
And why, oh, why does it happen?
Because sometimes we want answers to life’s unresolved problems and heartbreaks so badly that you’ll cling to anyone who tells you they can provide them.
And that is the premise behind Bug, the odd little dark comedy/drama/thriller by Tracy Letts currently getting a big Broadway revival courtesy of the Manhattan Theatre Club.
We’re back in the world of white trash that Mr. Letts portrays so well and with such unexpected allure (the biggest achievement is you don’t mind being in their company). Agnes (Carrie Coon) drinks a bit, does drugs a bit, likes her relative freedom as a single woman in the Oklahoma City motel room she calls home; and freaks a bit at the notion that her freedom is threatened: for her abusive ex-husband, Goss (Steve Key) has just been released from prison. Which additionally exacerbates memories of the six year old son who was snatched from her care thirteen years before.
She takes solace in her lesbian best bud, RC (Jennifer Engstrom) and the young man RC picked up at a party, Peter (Namir Smallwood), who very quickly and quietly becomes a live-in fixture. Quiet, innocuous and unassuming at first, Peter gradually proves to be none of those things. How much of that is his head-trip and how much is legitimately motivated paranoia is at the crux of the matter. Bugs have something to do with it. And I don’t mean hidden microphones. Well, maybe those too. And Agnes buys into it. All of it.
Bug is a mix of styles, albeit a smooth one—there’s Hitchcockian thriller, Sheppardesque deep South surrealism, Pinteresque ambiguity—and a merciless, deadpan taste for extreme irony that is all Mr. Letts’ own. (And that may be best realized in the play’s most sophisticated character, one best not given away here, manifested by Randall Arney in a brilliant cameo role that synthesizes all the elements.)
All the performers deliver a slow-burn intensity A-game, under the direction of David Cromer who, per usual, is keyed right into the pitch Bug’s uncertain universe, and delivered a Broadway-worthy experience that doesn’t betray its increasingly claustrophobic intimacy (it originally debuted in NYC at what is now the Greenwich House Theatre). If you don’t mind a visit to redneck country, where the hobby is to endure encroaching volatility–or cause it–you may find Bug worth a visit.