The production of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts’s is directed by Tony Award winner David Cromer will run on Broadway until the 22nd February.
The Guardian: *** “Audiences seeing Bug for the first time, then, may well be transfixed, albeit temporarily. Anyone familiar with an earlier production or the William Friedkin film (which introduces some ambiguities to the story’s ending) might start to wonder if maybe Agnes and Peter are ultimately a little thin as characters – if they’re worth the intensity that Coon and Smallwood invest into this production.’
The New York Times: “This new Manhattan Theater Club production, which opened Thursday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is more tender and balanced, with Namir Smallwood rendering Peter as a gentler, less alien figure. The focus has shifted to his romantic partner, Agnes (Coon), a desperate sad sack haunted by a loss in her past. In a superb performance, Coon provides the alpha energy this time, her eruptive anger masking an inner conflict worn on her weary face. The director David Cromer still delivers effective jolts, yet his production feels disturbingly closer to home.”
Variety: “Despite having a runtime of just under two hours, there is so much packed into “Bug” from isolation to mental illness and the human desire for connection. Though it’s a story set 30 years ago, it shows how easily people succumb to cult-like behavior and conspiratorial thinking, especially when they are looking to fill a void. In the end, the play showcases how an infestation can spread and expand, quickly becoming something too terrifying and monstrous to contain.”
The Wall Street Journal: “Carrie Coon is unleashed from her corsets—and every other stitch of clothing—in the blistering Broadway revival of her husband Tracy Letts’s macabre thriller “Bug,” being presented by Manhattan Theatre Club roughly 20 years after it was first seen in New York off-Broadway. (Due to the prevalence of nudity, audiences must turn off their phones and have them put in secure pouches for the show’s duration.)”
New York Post: “Because of Letts’ empathetic writing and Coon’s broken, can’t-take-it-anymore performance, we understand their extremism and why they believe the outlandish things they believe — even if Peter is the harder nut to crack.”
Time Out: **** “It speaks to a larger crisis that has only expanded since Letts wrote the play: a twisted culture of conspiracy, exemplified by phenomena like QAnon and Pizzagate, that attracts broken people into collective psychosis. That’s the genuine horror built into this play, and perhaps also its most soothing aspect. In Bug, at least, the contagion is contained. “
Vulture: “The performance is forceful enough for this Bug to operate chiefly as a character study. Despite the cesspits of conspiracy-think that pollute contemporary politics, the specific paranoia of Letts’s characters — bugs under the skin, brainwashing, nefarious doctors in government labs — feels less blazingly relevant than comparatively quaint. At the same time, because Cromer and his designers opt to keep the audience at a remove from Peter and Agnes’s folie à deux, the monsters they behold don’t ever truly spook us. They are shadows only, never claws and flesh. In such a production, the fantasy at the story’s center can’t become contagious. We bear witness to two sad, mad people. We don’t question our own sanity.”
Theatre Mania: “There are elements of Cromer’s staging that could be tightened—the opening scene could ignite more quickly, and the final moments would benefit from greater explosive sharpness. But that’s just picking nits. Neither diminishes the way this production achieves Bug‘s core truth: that we’re all just one charismatic stranger—whether he’s convinced the government is on his tail or happens to be the president of the United States—away from destruction. Bug is the scariest play ever written.”
Entertainment Weekly: “Agnes and Peter’s connection, while fascinating, isn’t exactly unique — not when it comes to grafting the story onto the real world. Originally penned in 1996, Bug‘s ideas about the allure of conspiracy have aged frighteningly well. Agnes’ descent isn’t just traceable, it’s eerily familiar. After all, her desires are universal: a place to direct her anger, an explanation for what she’s lost, an answer to cling to, and someone to stand by her side. All it costs is her sanity.”
AmNY: “Seen on Broadway, with greater polish and physical distance, “Bug” lands differently. The problem isn’t that “Bug” no longer makes sense. It’s that this time, I never fully went with it. I understood what the play was doing. I respected the craft. I appreciated the performances. But I didn’t surrender to the descent. Where the play once swept me into its fever dream, I remained aware, analytical, outside the experience. The bugs never got under my skin.”
New York Stage Review: *** “Bug is likely to stay with you for awhile, in part for its wild finish, but also because it’s been given a first rate production. And Letts wisely injected a healthy dose of humor to keep us engaged. I wouldn’t call it a great play but it is an admirably combustible one. And if you’re looking to get creeped out, it gets the job done.”
1minutecritic.com: “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.”
Theatrely.com: “For Coon, this production’s slow emotional buildup proves trickier. Her Agnes is desperate, but also formidable; searching for comfort, but also whip-smart. Coon’s effortless power as a performer sometimes works against her, though these contradictions also lie in the text. Agnes’ strength does make her eventual fall into delusion a little bit harder to believe. “
New York Theatre Guide: “Thrillers are rare specimens on Broadway, so director David Cromer’s production — cast intact from a 2020 run with Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago — is a welcome departure from typical living-room dramas. While bureaucratic espionage and broken people make for fertile, topical terrain, there are flies in Letts’s dramatic ointment. An uneventful first act wearies. Random banging and buzzing and long silent stretches don’t unsettle as presumably intended. And the notion that Agnes’s loneliness is so extreme that it makes her susceptible to Peter’s wild delusions strains credulity. It’s not like she’s shut off from society. We’re left to just go with it; how much that bugs you will vary.”
To find out more visit: https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2025-26-season/bug/