Carrie Coon leads Broadway debut of Tracy Letts’s 'Bug' at Friedman Theater

Carrie Coon gives a commanding performance in Tracy Letts’s play "Bug," which opened Thursday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater in a Manhattan Theater Club production that marks the play’s Broadway debut.

The revival follows Agnes, a waitress who descends into a world of conspiracy theories. The New York Times review says the new staging is more tender and balanced than the production that premiered two decades ago at the Barrow Street Theater, when Michael Shannon’s performance as Peter dominated the piece. Namir Smallwood plays Peter here as a gentler figure, David Cromer directs, and the production uses Takeshi Kata’s messy set, Heather Gilbert’s lighting and Josh Schmidt’s sound design (which the review notes includes an Ice Cube riff) to underline the play’s slippery mix of thriller, romance and nightmare. The review also highlights the production’s topicality, arguing that fringe theories have moved into mainstream rhetoric and that the play’s question — how someone falls into such thinking — feels urgent.

The run is scheduled through Feb. 22 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, with a running time of about two hours. Jason Zinoman, who reviewed the production for The Times, calls this revival a layered and assured tragedy for a cracked moment and suggests its most disturbing idea is that the descent into conspiratorial thinking can feel a little like falling in love.

Key Topics

Culture, Carrie Coon, Bug, Tracy Letts, Namir Smallwood, David Cromer