If anyone could successfully wedge a horror/psychological thriller into a love story, it would be Tracy Letts. Bug, which he wrote 30 years ago, is a peculiar play that has aged well in our conspiracy-obsessed culture. And while I’d have to call it a minor work in Letts’ impressive canon, it makes sense to revive it now, especially with the playwright’s immensely talented wife, Carrie Coon, in the lead role.
It starts slow, but thanks in part to the deft hand of director David Cromer it picks up speed like a ticking time bomb by play’s end. Coon plays 44-year-old Agnes, a waitress in a small Oklahoma City town with an ex-con ex-husband and a fondness for cocaine.
The play is set in a cramped motel room which Agnes calls home. She has one friend, RC (Jennifer Engstrom), but that seems to be the extent of her sedentary life. Everything changes when RC invites a stranger to meet Agnes while on their way to a party. Peter Evans (Namir Smallwood) comes across as a perceptive sort and well-educated. He speaks slowly with a calm deliberateness which intrigues Agnes. He seems like a respectful guy, worlds apart from Agnes’ volatile ex-husband, Jerry Goss (played with good ol boy menace by Steve Key), who just got out of jail after serving a stint for armed robbery. Jerry makes several unwelcome visits to the motel expecting Agnes to take him back. It doesn’t help his cause that he’s hot-tempered and abusive. But it does give Agnes good reason to ask Peter to stay over.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Agnes and Peter’s relationship sparks quickly and it doesn’t take long before the clothes come off. There’s a lot of nudity in the show and it explains the reason that audience cellphones are locked up before entering the theater.
Over the course of close to two hours (with an intermission), the story descends into a nightmarish romance as Peter reveals that he escaped from an Army hospital where he’d been the subject of crude experiments that turned his blood and body into a parasitic hellscape. Seeing the two of them naked makes the revelation of bugs planted in his skin all the more cringeworthy. Audience members, including yours truly, were visibly itching bodyparts. Such is the power of suggestion and effective playwriting.
There’s a lot more to the story which ratchets up the suspense but you’ll find no spoilers here, other than to say paranoia can be destructively contagious.
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.
Namir Smallwood as the mysterious Peter is compellingly persuasive as he talks of people doing things to you that you don’t know anything about. He fills Agnes with fears of radioactive elements in air conditioners, warning that she’ll never be safe again given the threat of technology and chemicals surrounding us. The more he talks, the more claustrophobic that motel room (expertly designed by Takeshi Kata) starts to feel.
Letts apparently did a lot of research for the work and it shows in the way he crafted his characters.The impressionable Agnes is not an easy role to play. She’s bright but limited, and Coon portrays her with just the right mix of scepticism and lonely desire; and while the climactic end may be hard to swallow, it takes someone with the methodical cadence of Peter (so well played by Smallwood) to burrow right into her head. The two stars deserve high praise for making a most incredible climax make perfect sense.
Bug is likely to stay with you for awhile, in part for its wild finish, but also because it’s been given a first rate production. And Letts wisely injected a healthy dose of humor to keep us engaged. I wouldn’t call it a great play but it is an admirably combustible one. And if you’re looking to get creeped out, it gets the job done.
Bug opened January 8, 2026, at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and runs through February 22. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
