Tracy Letts’s Bug may have first crawled onto the Off-Broadway stage in 1996, but its long-awaited Broadway premiere arrives feeling disturbingly attuned to the present moment. Directed with unnerving restraint by the brilliant David Cromer, this psychological thriller—presented by Manhattan Theatre Club—is not designed to comfort. It is designed to divide, provoke, and burrow under the skin. And it will.

Carrie Coon Photo by
Matthew Murphy

At the center of the infestation is Carrie Coon, delivering a performance so raw and emotionally catastrophic that a Tony nomination feels inevitable—if only for a single, shattering scream that lands like the sound of humanity realizing it may be the problem. Emmy and Tony nominee (The White Lotus, The Gilded Age), Coon inhabits Agnes, a freebasing addict whose already fragile life begins to unravel when she meets Peter, played with hypnotic intensity by Namir Smallwood.

Carrie Coon, Jennifer Engstrom, Steve Key, Namir Smallwood Photo by Matthew Murphy

Agnes lives in a grubby Oklahoma motel room, haunted by mysterious phone calls, an abusive ex-husband Jerry (a menacing Steve Key), and the unspeakable absence of a child whose fate lingers like a ghost. When her friend R.C. (Jennifer Engstrom) drops by with a man she’s just met, Agnes encounters Peter—another lost soul, a Gulf War veteran who believes the U.S. government has planted microscopic parasitic aphids inside his body to surveil and control him.

Namir Smallwood Photo by Matthew Murphy

Is Peter delusional? Or has the government crossed a line that endangers humanity itself? That question is the engine of the play—and its most dangerous virus.

Enter Dr. Sweet (Randall Arney), a figure who claims to know far more than he should, further muddying the line between paranoia and possibility. Cromer’s production—reuniting the cast from the acclaimed 2020 Steppenwolf Theatre Company run—eschews traditional living-room realism in favor of something far more corrosive. This is not a play that explains itself. It demands that the audience sit in uncertainty.

Letts’ Bug is crawling with questions. Is this a descent into psychosis between two drug-addled lost souls, or a chilling exposé of government-backed horrors that most of us are too afraid to name? Bug will divide audiences, but its impact is undeniable.

Carrie Coon Photo by
Matthew Murphy

Carrie Coon delivers what may be a career-defining performance. Smallwood’s Peter is riveting—he believes the government has implanted microscopic bugs to track and control him. Whether this is delusion or fractured truth is the pulsing heart of the show.

Namir Smallwood Photo by Matthew Murphy

The brilliance of Bug lies in that very ambiguity. At one point, Peter claims that Ted Bundy, Tim McVeigh, and Jim Jones were all part of covert experiments to manufacture assassins. It sounds insane—until you remember that Agent Orange, MKUltra, the Edgewood/Aberdeen experiments, and T-NSIAD-94-266 were all very real. Between 1922 and 1975, the U.S. government engaged in human experimentation that today reads like science fiction. Which raises the uncomfortable possibility: the things that sound most insane might actually be the most true.

Your response to Bug may depend on your appetite for that idea. My guest viewed it as a harrowing case of folie à deux, a delusional spiral gone horribly wrong. I left the theater unsettled for a different reason: because I think Letts may be trying to tell us something we don’t want to hear. Most of humanity doesn’t want to face the facts. But the clues are there if you’re willing to see them.

Technically, the production is astonishing. Takeshi Kata’s set transforms from realism to surrealism with eerie fluidity, and Heather Gilbert’s lighting design keeps us suspended in dread. When the motel room finally shifts—becoming a hive of paranoia and hallucination—the effect is electric.

Coon’s final scream may well earn her another Tony nomination, and deservedly so. Smallwood, too, is unforgettable, playing Peter with equal parts tenderness and terror. Steve Key (as Agnes’s abusive ex), Jennifer Engstrom (as her friend R.C.), and Randall Arney (as the elusive Dr. Sweet) round out a cast without a weak link, thanks to Cromer’s masterful direction.

This is not comfort theatre. Bug burrows deep into your skin, festering with ideas long after the curtain falls. You may not agree on what happened—but you’ll feel it.

Bug: Manhattan Theatre Club Presents at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, until February 22nd.