Broadway’s Bug Extends Its Run as Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood Ignite the Stage
The contagion of paranoia onstage at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Bug will continue to spread for two more weeks. The Broadway premiere of Tracy Letts’s unnerving psychological thriller, directed by David Cromer, has extended its run at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 22 after opening to a chorus of critical acclaim.
The play, which first seared audiences in Chicago under Cromer’s direction at Steppenwolf Theatre in 2021, has arrived on Broadway with an electricity that’s hard to shake. “A nerve-rattling shocker,” wrote The New York Times. The Washington Post called it “sensationally unnerving.”
At the center of this fever dream are Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood, reprising their Steppenwolf performances as Agnes White and Peter Evans — two damaged souls whose codependent bond curdles into something nightmarishly intimate. In Cromer’s taut staging, set inside a dingy Oklahoma motel room, love mutates into obsession, and the line between tenderness and terror dissolves.
Coon, a three-time Emmy nominee known for The Leftovers and Fargo, brings a raw volatility to Agnes, while Smallwood matches her with a performance alternately magnetic and frightening. Supporting turns by Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom, and Steve Key complete an ensemble steeped in the precision and fearlessness characteristic of Steppenwolf alumni.
Originally scheduled to close on February 8, Bug has benefited from word-of-mouth momentum and an appetite for intimate, unsettling work amid Broadway’s season of larger-scale revivals. “This production crackles with immediacy,” said MTC Artistic Director Nicki Hunter in an interview. “It’s a reminder that theatre can disturb us in ways no other art form can.”
Letts, a Pulitzer and Tony winner for August: Osage County, again probes American delusion — this time through the minefield of mistrust, addiction, and conspiracy theories that feel both timeless and freshly relevant. Cromer, the Tony Award-winning director of The Band’s Visit, grounds the play’s hysteria in the banal details of life at the margins: buzzing lights, unmade beds, whispered confessions.
The creative team includes scenic designer Takeshi Kata, costume designer Sarah Laux, lighting designer Heather Gilbert, and sound designer Josh Schmidt — all working in concert to render the motel’s claustrophobic dread.
For more than five decades, Manhattan Theatre Club has offered a haven for new plays and new talent, producing over 600 premieres and garnering seven Pulitzer Prizes along the way. With Bug, the institution again reaffirms its commitment to the daring and the discomforting — the kind of theatre that lingers long after the house lights come up.
Tickets are available at Telecharge.com and through the Manhattan Theatre Club box office.
Website: manhattantheatreclub.com
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