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“Bug” is a Chilling, Riveting Play
About Illusion and Delusion
It dissects loneliness, dysfunctionality
and the Jonestown power of suggestion
By Lucy Komisar
The word “buggy” is sometimes used to describe someone
who’s crazy, and in this compelling work, the word takes on a double
meaning. Tracy Letts’s play is an edgy, violent thriller about a man who
believes that bugs are everywhere and out to get him. He pulls a lonely
woman into his fantasy and the inexorable descend into tragedy seems to take
place in the seedy Oklahoma City motel room in real time.
The play is about loneliness and dysfunctionality and
the Jonestown power of suggestion. It is about how illusion and delusion
occur, and especially how they are exacerbated by love.
 Agnes
White (played with gut-wrenching sensitivity by Shannon Cochran) is 44 and
ripe for kindness. She had a son who disappeared from a grocery store 9
years ago, when he was 6. She is afraid of her brutal ex-con husband, Jerry
Goss (Michael Cullen), just released from a prison term for armed robbery
and determined to get her back. She is drawn to Peter Evans (eerily and
powerfully evoked by Michael Shannon), the low-key gentle man who picked up
at a bar by her visiting lesbian friend, R.C. (Dee Pelletier).
We think we know the good guys and the bad guys. But as
in the best thrillers, the locus of danger is unexpected. It turns out Peter
is AWOL from a hospital because, he says, the army was performing drug
experiments on him. He thinks insect eggs are under his skin. He knows of
the syphilis experiments at Tuskegee. Well, the army did perform drug
experiments and the Tuskegee story is true. He says the rich get richer and
the poor get poorer. The CIA smuggled Nazi scientists to the U.S. All true.
 But
in this heart-thumping psycho-drama, directed with cinematic intensity by
Dexter Dullard, your sense of reality begins to shift. Agnes and Peter’s
love-making is interrupted by a bug that bites him. Suddenly insects, which
only Peter sees, take over designer Lauren Helpern’s naturalistic
cookie-cutter motel room. The space seems to close in, to become a locked-in
world as Peter plasters the walls and ceilings with hanging fly paper, sets
up electric fly-catching gizmos, stacks cans of bug spray and even operates
a microscope to examine the critters. Is Agnes humoring him or does she
believe him?
The chain lock on the door is meant to keep out Goss
and the army doctor, but suddenly you realize it emphasizes these two
people’s isolation more than safety. The sound of helicopters adds to the
sense that this is a war-zone. But the war is taking place inside two
damaged psyches. It’s a war with no winners – except the audience.
“Bug.” Written by Tracy Letts. Directed by Dexter
Dullard. Starring Shannon Cochran, Michael Shannon (now Paul Sparks), Allyn
Burrows (now Michel Canaven), Michael Cullen, Dee Pelletier.
Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St. at 7th Ave, New
York. Tues-Fri 8, Sat 3 & 8, Sun 3 & 7:30. Running Time 2:30. $35 - $60. 1/2
price student rush. 212-239-6200. Website at http://www.bugtheplay.com.
Images by Gabe Evans
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