Review of BUG

By Ben Lerner 

The current Broadway season of plays is full of high-stakes drama, intensity, topicality, and stellar performances. Oedipus, for example, is gripping and haunting. Marjorie Prime is powerful and deeply relevant. Neither is light viewing — you’ll leave shellshocked — but both are effectively thought-provoking, top-tier dramatic theatre. If you liked either of those, add Bug to your list now.

Carrie Coon stars in a revival of her husband Tracy Letts’ 1996 thriller, which was also adapted into a horror film starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon. It takes place exclusively in the motel room of Agnes (Coon), who strikes up a friendship with Peter, an ex-soldier with a mysterious backstory (Namir Smallwood). The supporting cast is Agnes’ abusive ex-husband (Steve Key), her friend and drug dealer R.C. (the scene-stealing Jennifer Engstrom), and a doctor from Peter’s past (Randall Arney).

In this new Broadway production at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the events remain horrifying — but it’s not necessarily a straight-up horror play. The new direction by David Cromer, and especially the devastating lead performances by Coon and Smallwood, present a story that surely gets gory (be forewarned) but is more sad than prior iterations. In other words, the villain and his victim are both suffering from mental illness and/or trauma, and the ways in which they descend into madness evoke sympathy alongside shock.

If you think Act One is a slow burn, just you wait. Act Two builds to a crescendo of shocking proportions, mirroring the slippery slope of conspiracies and how quickly things can devolve from reality to insanity. I found the full nearly two-hour performance gripping, but it’s worth knowing this one builds exponentially, so each scene is more “off” than the last — at first subtly, and eventually very, very climactically.

The notion this play is just about conspiracy theorists, at least in a “faked moon landing” sense, is reductive — one character is sick, while the other is susceptible. It begs the question: if conspiracy theorists are “delusional,” are all people experiencing delusions conspiracy theorists? Or are they all just unwell? The play doesn’t answer this, so you’ll be left theorizing. As the lead characters leave reality, it’s sometimes unclear if what we see onstage is real. Are we a fly on the wall (no pun intended), or are we seeing it through the eyes of the drug-abusing lead characters? 

What is certain is that Carrie Coon delivers a tour de force. Fans who love her from The Gilded Age or The White Lotus will forget those characters quickly, as Coon transforms into Agnes, who couldn’t be more different. With a season full of intense, thought-provoking dramas anchored by spectacular lead female performances, this year’s race for the Leading Actress in a Play Tony Award will be heated. Coon enters the competition as a major threat alongside Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy, June Squibb and/or Cynthia Nixon in Marjorie Prime, and my personal pick, the brilliant Lesley Manville in Oedipus. Many more plays are set to open this spring, so plenty could change. For now, don’t miss Carrie Coon in Bug, through March 8 only. Tickets at https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2025-26-season/bug/