By Matthew Wexler
From playing the tightly-wound, corset-wearing matriarch on The Gilded Age to smoking a crack pipe in a dreary motel room on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, Carrie Coon isn’t just having a moment; she’s blowing it up. On Broadway for the first time in more than a decade, Coon leads a first-rate ensemble in Tracy Letts’ Bug. But like the critters Coon and co-star Namir Smallwood examine under a microscope, what audiences choose to believe is up for debate.
Letts (who later won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for August: Osage County) wrote Bug in 1996. This is the first time his play about Agnes, a working-class woman with a shattered past, and the odd stranger who takes up residence in her motel room, has appeared on Broadway, likely driven by her star power, which also includes a turn in season three of The White Lotus.
It wants better content.
Introduced by friend R.C. (a fantastic Jennfer Engstrom), Peter (Smallwood) quickly establishes his presence with Agnes, who fears her husband’s (Steve Key) post-prison return while also craving intimacy. But Peter’s got an itch to scratch. Is it bed bugs or government surveillance planted in his molar? There’s only one way to find out, but I’m not giving any spoilers.
Over the course of several weeks, the pair falls into a spiral of drug use, conspiracy theories, and confessionals as they grapple with reality. A suspension of disbelief is required to stay on board with the escalating paranoia, though Peter makes a case for nefarious government action from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to the U.S. Army’s Cold War “Operation Delirium.”
Director David Cromer (Dead Outlaw, Meet the Cartozians) keeps the play’s focus tight and the performances brisk within the confines of scenic designer Takeshi Kata’s oppressive motel room-turned bunker. But it’s Coon and Smallwood’s performances that make us question how far we’ll go to not feel alone, regardless of the outcome.
“You’re never really safe,” says Peter. “Not anymore, not on this planet. We’ll never be safe again.”
4 out of 5 stars
Fast facts: ‘Bug’
Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood deliver performances that get under your skin in Tracy Letts’ paranoid, unsettling Broadway debut of Bug.
- Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York City
- Running time: One hour and 55 minutes with one intermission
- Performances through February 22, 2026
