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Bug starring Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Broadway) - ★★★ REVIEW
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- [00:00]
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- [02:00]
Mickey Jo
Visit Wells Fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply. Let's talk about bug Were you bugged by this play? Many people I know were bugged by this play. This is the Marmite of Broadway right now. Thoroughly divisive. Prior to seeing this for myself last month, I had heard from friends who loved this and friends who absolutely hated it after the show, as everyone is retrieving their phones out of these sealed yonder pouches and finding out if the world has become worse in the past couple of hours. Don't laugh. It's very possible. Even then you could hear on either side of you on the sidewalk, people who talked about how brilliant it was and people who thought it was just dreadful. As always, let us decide for ourselves. But first, an introduction. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am also British, but a handful of times every year I head over to New York City to see as many new Broadway and Off Broadway openings as possible. And in an admittedly slower season, one of the most talked about plays is a new production of Tracy Letts Bug, playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Presented by the Manhattan Theatre Company. It's a production that originally premiered in 2020 and 2021 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, with whom Tracy Lutz has been extensively affiliated. This production is directed by David Cromer and stars the playwright's Carrie Coon opposite Namir Smallwood with a small ensemble cast around them. The play itself actually premiered at the Gate Theatre in London in the mid-1990s, making it about one year younger than yours truly and subsequently arrived Off Broadway in the mid 2000s, had a starry London production in the 2010s, and is finally, after a film adaptation in the intervening years, enjoying its Broadway premiere this year and with consideration for the fact that the play engages with ideas about the human consciousness and paranoia. It's been really interesting to consider this play and this production through the ultra specific lens of 2026America. After all, the question I ask, possibly ad nauseam, is why this play and why now? It is said that this production is actually updated to be set in 2026, which we will discuss a little bit, but I have a sort of a notion in the back of my mind that you can look forward to a little later on about why this might be perceived very differently now to how it would have been even a few years ago, even back 2000 and 20s in Chicago. Before then, though, I am perhaps more intrigued than ever to find out what everyone else thought about this admittedly polarizing piece of theatre. If you have seen Bug either this or a previous production of the play, please spoiler free. If possible, let us all know what you thought in the comments section down below. And speaking of spoilers, I'm going to try and dissect this review into three different chunks. We are first going to take a completely spoiler free overview of the play Before I begin to approach the sort of mid spoiler realm. I'm going to call this the spoiler mid section where I talk about some of the events of perhaps the first act so that we can talk about the themes before. Finally, because I think with a play like this it is necessary and for those of you who have already seen it in some iteration, the last section, which will be utterly spoiler inclusive as we talk about the ending. Oh, the ending. And believe me when I tell you that I am itching to discuss this play with you. If you would like to hear my thoughts on other Broadway shows this season as well as everything happening here in London and indeed around the world, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube or follow me on podcast platforms for more reviews and more theater themed discussions. In the meantime, let's talk about Bug. So what I can tell you before we begin to discuss the plot whatsoever, is that this is a play which I think defies a lot of initial expectations. Everything about the marketing, about the image that you see here on the front cover of the playbill suggests that it's some sort of intense dark psychological thriller. And to some extent it is. It certainly builds towards one. I wouldn't describe it at any point as particularly scary. It is, however, increasingly suspenseful and intense. It might seem as though this is a two hander play and this may as well be a sub genre of dramatic theatre in New York, particularly off Broadway. You see a great many. I'm thinking about gruesome playground injuries. I'm thinking about just a whole handful blackout songs I think that's currently running at mcc. A bunch of male, female, two person plays that deal with this intense relationship between two damaged individuals. This actually has a slightly wider supporting cast around it and it isn't a one act, 90 or 100 minute affair either. There are two separated acts which initially I thought were a little unearned. Considering the cumulative runtime. I didn't really understand why we needed an intermission whatsoever. Especially if intensity was the name of the game. Why not preserve that? Why not just keep us on this, you know, admittedly wild ride And a little way into the second act I came to appreciate splitting the two in half just to allow them to be distinct. Because by the time we return for the second act, we eventually realize that there has been a distinct evolution in what it is that we are looking at. And that's a feature of the experience of watching this play is discerning exactly what it is that you are seeing and trying to pick apart each individual on stage. These characters who when they initially arrive on stage appear to us to be uncomplicated and straightforward, but who we come to realize have complex, traumatic, even alienating characteristics. Ones which when brought together in a sort of chemical reaction will ignite and catalyze the uncomfortable events of this plot. Now, as you arrive to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the diligent staff will inform you that your mobile devices will need to be switched off and placed into secured yonder pouches. This is something that is being rolled out at more and more theaters in New York, particularly for productions which involve nudity. And it's a way of protecting the safety of actors and preserving, I think, the sanctity of the theatrical experience in an increasingly digital age. Liberation, which recently closed on Broadway, was doing this. Prince F, when it was running off Broadway at Studio Sea View, was doing the same thing. And though I guess this is some kind of a spoiler, they are doing it at Bug for the same reason. And, you know, not only am I a huge proponent for advocating on behalf of actors and maintaining a safety of this working environment, especially for individuals who, you know, have some kind of a Prof. From screen appearances, etc. I also think that the audience that you curate by doing this has already opted into a more engaged theatrical experience. And how fantastic, in this day and age, in this worsening humanity, that we can still find nightly an auditorium full of people who will happily switch off the Doomsday book in the pocket of their coats so that they may sit down together as part of a community of strangers for a couple of hours in order to fully engage with a story. And a story which is unusual and, like I said, divisive. And obviously I'm obsessed with the theatrical space, as I suspect many of you are as well, if you're listening to this. But there is something so special about an audience who, prior to the beginning of a play, have mutually agreed to that kind of an acute focus, which I think Bug benefits from. I don't know that the narrative is compelling enough in a vacuum. I think it needs that audience response. I think it needs to be weighed against your own perceptions and your own consider of what's happening. There is, as it goes on, a slight somersaulting sensation of what it is that you choose to believe, and a question that it begins to ask of an audience of, you know, how much you are willing to believe, to what extent you are willing to suspend any disbelief that you might have. I realize as we come towards the end of this part of the review, I haven't particularly hinted at my own verdict. And I enjoyed Bug. I enjoyed its performances. Each were painfully believable, essentially naturalistic, which in a play like this means a lot of smoking and a lot of mumbling. And if I felt as though I was slow to warm to it. And it didn't necessarily leave me with an awful lot beyond shock, there was a decent chunk of time in the middle where I was hugely engaged with it and where I was really contending with the questions that it was asking of me. And we are, I think, relatively deprived of pieces of theater that really ask difficult, dangerous questions of an audience and require us by the end to come up with an answer. Which perhaps tantalizingly brings us towards the next section of this review, where, without fully spoiling the events of the play, I you a little bit more about what it's about. So at the beginning of the Playbook, we find ourselves peering into this sort of dated motel room set designed by Takeshi Kata. When out walks Carrie Coon, she's playing a character named Agnes, though it will be a little while before we learn that, or very much about her. She has a little.
- [11:06]
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- [12:08]
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- [12:44]
Mickey Jo
Business to do around the space she is clearly staying there by herself, though she does have a persistent telephone call, which she either picks up begrudgingly or ignores. We gather that she knows exactly who it is. Who is Calling her. There is a sort of a sense of. Of mystery and of danger to her circumstances, though the danger being foreshadowed in this moment isn't necessarily the one that's on its way. And we come to understand that Agnes is living this deeply functional existence, one that is taking place after the fact. And the puzzle pieces slowly connect to each other to clue us into what that fact might have been, what the life is that this woman has already lived. We find out about a previous romantic partner, a previous spouse who has recently got out of jail, who is viol the terms of his parole by seeing her. His name is Gerry. He's played by Steve Key. Agnes also has a friend who comes to visit her, played by Jennifer Engstrom, who, as she is getting ready for a party, has brought with her an acquaintance, a man named Peter Evans. And he is, if possible, even more enigmatic than Agnes, about whom at which point we still haven't learned all that much. Agnes is something of a curiosity. Her friend is completely indicative, and Peter is suspiciously evasive. What follows is a sense of intrigue between these two, between Agnes and Peter that quickly gives way to a surprising deepening of their relationship. In very little time, she innately feels that she can trust him enough to spend the night there with her, though their arrangement isn't immediately romantic and they spend the subsequent scene sort of guardedly sniffing around each other. Up to this point, everything has been so naturalistic and so steady that you wonder when an actual theatrical plot is going to manifest. And then something interesting happens when Peter heads into the bathroom and seamlessly, although no time has passed, a different man walks out. This is our first encounter with Agnes's ex husband Jerry, who has arrived to inflict himself on her. We can't quite tell whether he is surprised at her indifference to this or simply chooses to ignore it. But the juxtaposition of these moments does tell us a lot about Agnes, as we question whether she is more surprised by her ex husband's cruelty or the kindness of this total stranger. What we can't anticipate at this stage is that seeds have already been sown for a dangerous codependency between Agnes and Peter. Each in their own way damaged, each in their own way desperate. And as he is warning her about dangerous substances within cocaine and finding bugs on his body while he's sleeping, what initially seems to be an abundance of caution and attention to detail on his part is quickly realized to be a particularly dangerous sort of an obsession. The play ultimately devolves into what I would Characterize as a game of cat and mouse. If the mouse was totally up for it and the cat was convinced that it was doing the mouse a favor. With us learning about the extent of Peter's tendency towards conspiracy theories and Agnes as the recipient of those ideas, and because this is centered from her perspective and not his, what we're doing here is telling a story not about the conspiracy theorists themselves, but about the idea of radicalization. And up to this point, everything that we've been learning about her, the way in which she has been portrayed and related to us, is painting a picture of someone vulnerable to these ideas, vulnerable to this kind of dangerous radicalization. This is a woman who has already isolated herself from society as a result of traumatic events in her past that she still does not have answers about. She is still tormenting herself over things that have happened that she considers to have been her responsibility. It's under almost these exact circumstances that someone could find themselves initiated into a cult. And she's simply found a man who is convinced that there are bugs everywhere. His explanation for which only gets worse. And a couple of moments of the text are just skin crawling from Tracy Letts. This is going to have you itching yourselves in your seats. And it's never explicitly depicted in a grotesque or particularly visible way as we go on, for very good reason. But it does, I think, become harder to listen to as it simultaneously becomes harder for us to judge and have a firm stance on. The notion that he is simply seeing these bugs everywhere and that they don't truly exist seems to be squashed, as it were, when Carrie Coon's character can see them too. This taking place in the first scene, which incorporates nudity, which at the time I didn't think offered enough justification for the actors to be naked on stage. By the time that it happens again later on, then I have changed my mind. And the mania to which we have descended by that point really calls for it. Jennifer Angstromoff offers the most memorable performance in the supporting cast. And the work that Carrie Coon and Amir Smallwood are doing is individually strong. But it's the relationship that they create together on stage. It's the tennis match that they are playing here, just volleying each other further and further into delusion, that really pays off. We, as an audience, I think, would buy into nothing less than a total belief of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Even though they seem to be extraordinary and impossible. Their onstage chemistry is the metaphorical equivalent of two clasped hands as they walk in lockstep up a mountain of insanity. And because of their commitment to each other, inexplicably, we walk only a few tentative steps behind. There comes a point in this play, and I say this on the absolute brink of engaging with further spoilers, where you have to really consider, is this true? And has it all been true this entire time? So now that we're here in the final chapter of this review, there will be extensive spoilers and I'm going to speak more openly about the events of this play. And I spoke to somebody afterwards who had seen this and asked, you know, what was your opinion? Who do you think was right?
- [18:50]
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- [19:52]
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- [20:28]
Mickey Jo
Think that he was like really making it up or that it was true. And there is some nuance there for reasons I'll explain in just a moment. But I also don't think that the ending of this particular production of the play There may be more room for manoeuvrability in previous productions, but this time around I don't think there's any gray area whatsoever. I think if you're not leaving that theatre knowing that this man was a conspiracy theorist who had deluded this woman who was vulnerable and Historically abused and grieving. If you find a way to believe that the totality of his observations within this motel room was actually correct, then I am astounded. I mean, the signature cocktail that they're serving is called the conspiracy theorist, for crying out loud. I think that gives us as plain an answer as we need, facetious though it may be of me. And essentially what he suspects here is that during his time in the military, I'll remind you that this production has been updated to the present day, 2026. He has been the subject of government experiments which historically not unheard of, but one which specifically has left him with, I believe, a dental implant that he does attempt to extract. Well, he successfully extracts from himself that he believes is secreting bugs by the millions. Yes, these bugs, which he believes that he can see, which Carrie Coon soon enough believes that she can see also lining the walls, crawling across the ceiling, taking bites all across their bodies. He believes that they coming out of one of his teeth. Listen, I told you these were skin crawling scenes. Who knew that when Tracy Letts sat down to write August Osage county, that was him chilling out. And there is, like I said, a little room in the midst of the play for speculation and consideration. By the time that she can also see these bugs under a microscope, you start to wonder, oh, is he actually telling the truth? Are we actually seeing the aftermath of horrible government interference? Is he legitimately now the subject of surveillance ongoingly? Is he not just making all of this up right up to the point when a medical professional arrives and tries to reason with Agnes, but unfortunately ends up getting stabbed by a maddened Peter in the stomach, and he does so in order to try and prove that this is not a real human being. And so, you know, when this man starts to bleed from the wound and then collapses and is never seen again, I think we can be pretty sure that we have boarded the express train to total injur instability. At which point the character study that we began with has metamorphosized into more of an insidious thriller, which ought to be compelling only by the time we've asked and answered the play's singular question. It doesn't have all that much more to say. And I want to consider how it plays to an audience in 2026 versus the originating version of this production back in 2020, 2021. And to see this in the early days of the pandemic, I think think would have been utterly different to see it now in this very challenging sociopolitical landscape, because on the One hand, that initial production of these two characters deliberately choosing to contain themselves within this claustrophobic space and, you know, becoming literal, unusual bedfellows, perhaps, and locking down together for their own protection would have been in many ways eerily familiar. And what's changed is that, you know, while that is still only just in the rear view mirror, we are now living through a time when disinformation and radicalization is, I think, a lot harder to watch and not take as a real affront. At a time when conspiracy theories have evolved from I think the FBI actually killed that president and perhaps aliens exist, to I'm not going to vaccinate myself against this deadly infection because I no longer have faith in science, or I'm going to disregard the benefits of study or expertise or education because a government is telling me to, because a politician is telling me to. In that context, I think it has become an awful lot harder for us to watch someone explain their worldview like this and then watch this be inflicted upon somebody impressionable. I am all for the twisting and contortion of reality, but one of the most satisfying theatrical experiences that we can have is for it all to get straightened out at the end, one way or another. How many brilliant dramatic plays are there where the final stage of the thing is some kind of a wounding revelation going back to, you know, Greek tragedy and Arthur Miller and Eugene o' Neill and all of these things? Even if it's in the final moment, our central characters are almost always brought to light, and here they bring themselves to a different kind of light, still living in what we can only assume is unfortunate, fatal ignorance. In that sense, then, it is also a frustrating watch, and it's intriguing to willfully update the production to a 2026 setting. When the material seems to speak more readily to a post Gulf War era, everything about it seems more dated than modern. There are so many things happening today. There are such a specificity that I think would need to get talked about. There are vaccines, there are masks. I mean, the way in which the government would even operate in pursuit of a dangerous individual today scarily looks very, very different. And so if David Cromer's production here is craving a sense of urgent reality, I'm not sure that it's finding it. That being said, it is doing its admirable best to keep us guessing. There is one set transformation that takes place towards the end of the show when the entire structure rolls out in a blackout and is replaced with one in which the walls have been lined with tin foil as they've gone full, almost textbook conspiracy theorists trying to eliminate all of the bugs that they believe are surrounding them while also maintaining their presence and not venturing out beyond these walls of safety. The entire creative production invokes this brilliant, feverish theatrical claustrophobia. And even when there comes a moment in which we decide we are no longer willing to be participatory in what these two characters are committed to, every aspect of it feels truthful. Aside from one little punch that happens early in the first act, we have to do something about the staging moment that indicates to an audience that someone's about to get punched before it happens, because they adjust themselves slightly and stand in the way they have to in order to do a stage punch and listen. I don't know what the solution is to that other than being in that position to begin with. What I do know is that the fight director for this production, Marcus Watson, is also the intimacy director, on which front I think really brilliant work has been done. Reminded me of, like I said, two handers like gruesome playground injuries. But also the play Scarlet Dreams, which is more about AI, which I saw off Broadway, gosh, last year or the year before, and it was a little less nuanced, but the themes were more topical and the way we sort of careered through its revelations reminded me of Bug. And it got me to wondering how this production ends up on Broadway when many telling similar stories are relegated to off and off Off Broadway theaters and beyond. You know, starry casting. I think what does make this special and what does make it worth seeing is the power found between these two performers and in their partnership. Now, as far as my reviews go, that may not have been the cleanest verdict that I've ever delivered. I don't think that this play or this production leaves you with a particularly clear cut response. It can leave you with a very extreme one. Like I said said, utterly polarizing. I think there is room to really engage with this and find a real fascination in it. I also completely understand everyone who is almost offended by the thing. There is nothing about it which is uplifting. These characters, while human and while passingly sympathetic and understandable, lack almost any sense of likability. If these are the reasons for for which you go to the theatre, then evidently this is not going to be the play for you. If you want something that is going to prove thought provoking and provocative and intriguing and sort of slippery as you try and contain it within your understanding, then you, I think, should go and check out Bug at the Friedman Theatre. While it is still playing. Of course, if you already have, I would love to know what you thought in the comments section down below. Are you pro bug? Are you anti bug? Are you like me? Somewhere in the middle? Let me know. And in the meantime, thank you for listening to my thoughts. I hope that you've enjoyed if you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for many more reviews of plays and musicals coming very soon. And as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day.
- [29:24]
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