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\u201cI\u2019m not an ax murderer,\u201d Peter (Namir Smallwood) says to Agnes (Carrie Coon.) It\u2019s his first line in \u201cBug,\u201d Tracy Letts\u2019 intentionally unsettling 1996 play, now in its Broadway debut. But what Peter does to Agnes turns out to be worse. She buys into his delusional conspiracy theory, that the government has infested them with bugs. <\/p>\n
\u201cBug\u201d was a shot of adrenaline and a delayed-release dose of anxiety when I saw it Off-Broadway. That was decades ago. Much of the effect for me has worn off. <\/p>\n
Letts was reportedly inspired to write the play after Army veteran Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing more than 150 people.\u00a0\u00a0McVeigh is one of the famous deluded perpetrators that Peter explicitly mentions in the play, along with Rev. Jim Jones (of the Jonestown Kool-Aid massacre), and Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber.) But what Peter tells Agnes is that all of them were framed,\u00a0\u00a0because they found out about the massive government conspiracy, and therefore needed to be silenced.<\/p>\n
This is a clever twist \u2013 Letts is never less than clever \u2013 but these dated references are just one of the several reasons why I was less taken with the play this time around.<\/p>\n
I saw \u201cBug\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Off-Broadway at what was then called the Barrow Street Theater, starring Michael Shannon as Peter. I don\u2019t remember if I directly tied it into what was happening in the world around us then \u2014 this was in 2004, a time when conspiracy theories around 9\/11 proliferated \u2014 but in retrospect it surely added to the atmosphere. Letts has recently implied, and others have explicitly agreed, that the depiction of political paranoia was prescient; that the revival is especially timely. I can\u2019t say I buy this. The darkness in 2026 feels of a different order \u2014 a creeping, and very real, authoritarian takeover. \u00a0Yes, there is an analogy to anti-vaccine crusaders, the Epstein file fanatics, deep state dissenters, but these can not now be separated from the Trump power grabs that feed off of them, and overshadow them. And, in any case, the particular paranoia in \u201cBug\u201d is too peculiar to feel like serious commentary. <\/p>\n
If \u201cBug\u201d can\u2019t plausibly be promoted as a message play, certainly not as a realistic one, there is still the potential for more narrow chills and thrills. Michael Shannon\u2019s memorably odd and charismatic performance drew us into Peter\u2019s claustrophobic world; indeed, cornered us in the sleazy motel room where the play unfolds. The new \u201cBug,\u201d though, is at MTC\u2019s Broadway house, the Samuel J. Friedman, which is more than three times the size. Rather than drawn in, I felt distanced from what was going on.<\/p>\n
The focus has also shifted from Peter the seducer to Agnes the seduced.\u00a0\u00a0Carrie Coon, who is the wife of the playwright, takes center stage, not least because her performance showcases the great range of an actress who has just come off of her high-profile role as the straitlaced, ambitious Bertha in \u201cThe Gilded Age,\u201d striving to rule over New York society. <\/p>\n
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Agnes is just about the exact opposite. Far from straitlaced, she is frequently naked (your phones must be locked into a Yondr\u00a0pouch)\u00a0 She is barely surviving, the battered ex-wife of a recently released convict (Steve Key),\u00a0\u00a0and the still-mourning mother of a child who disappeared from a grocery store a decade ago at the age of six. She has taken refuge in a seedy motel in Oklahoma City, where one of her few friends, fellow waitress RJ (Jennifer Engstrom), visits with somebody she herself has just met, Peter. Peter seems odd from the start, and withdrawn. We certainly believe Dr. Sweet (Randall Arney) when he appears at the motel and explains to Agnes: \u201cHe\u2019s been diagnosed as a delusional paranoid with schizophrenic tendencies, although personally, I\u2019m not a big fan of labels. His doctors believe he\u2019s potentially dangerous to himself, or even others.\u201d (The rest of the scene involving Dr. Sweet is so farfetched that it left me wondering whether we were supposed to understand that he is Agnes\u2019, and\/or Peter\u2019s, hallucination.)<\/p>\n
There is little evidence of Peter\u2019s charisma, which is obviously a conscious choice by Smallwood and director David Cromer (whose low-key approach has worked wonders with shows like \u201cOur Town\u201d and \u201cThe Band\u2019s Visit.\u201d) The result is that rather Peter seducing Agnes into his worldview, it\u2019s Agnes in all her loneliness and neediness\u00a0who puts herself there. It also means we in the audience are less likely to be seduced.<\/p>\n