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Bug
Taut psychological skid row drama played out in a seedy motel. To unveil the plot is to ruin the many twists and turns within. Disturbingly brilliant and some of Letts' finest writing.
- GenresPlays
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 8, 2022
A question for our times: What makes people give up control of their lives to irrationality?
The answer is contained in Tracy Letts's remarkable play Bug. Shaped like a horror story--the kind that any normal playwright and director would have put on celluloid rather than on stage--Bug mines the paranoid depths of the human soul, discovering there reasons for apathy, murder, and self-destruction of tragic proportions. It is, perversely, enormous vicarious fun and affectingly terrifying, or at least terrifyingly affecting.
Bug begins with a woman hiding out in a motel room (an homage to Psycho, perhaps?). Her name is Agnes White, and she's isolated herself here in this Oklahoma motor lodge because her abusive husband Jerry has just been released from jail. Agnes's panic is palpable, especially when the phone keeps ringing but nobody seems to be on the line; she smokes, drinks, and frets silently in near-darkness.
Then Agnes's friend R.C. turns up with a young stranger in tow, Peter Evans. Quiet and mysterious in a maverick-cowboy sort of way, Peter is also vaguely dangerous, which probably makes him even more attractive to Agnes than he'd otherwise be, and against her (and certainly our) better judgment--despite and also because of her predicament--she lets him stay overnight.
It should not surprise you to learn that Jerry shows up, too, and that Peter and Agnes eventually become involved. As Act One nears its close, we find a naked Peter in bed with an equally naked Agnes, searching among the bedclothes for a bug that he says has bitten him on the wrist. He finds it, and even though Agnes can't quite make it out, she humors him as he strips the bed and searches for more critters. Annoyed that Agnes refers to his prey as "he," Peter hypothesizes that it could be a matriarch bug, one that may have laid thousands of eggs in their room.
In Act Two, Peter is on the case: he is convinced that the room is infested (even though, as Agnes and R.C. sensibly point out, no other guest at the motel has reported seeing any insects whatsoever), and somehow linked into a vast and sinister conspiracy that involves such disparate events as the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana and the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh.
The question is: will Agnes believe in Peter's obsession, or will she manage to free herself from this increasingly unhinged man?
The other question is: will Jerry somehow return, and is he in any way involved with this weird plot?
Oh, and there's still one more question: Could Peter be right? Why does an Army doctor named Sweet turn up suddenly, claiming to be Peter's psychiatrist, but equipped with information about Agnes that he has no obvious reason to know?
Why does a pizza get delivered to Agnes' room, even though neither she nor Peter remembers ordering it?
I'm not telling, of course; read Bug to find out how it all plays out (and climaxes in a spectacular and inevitable conclusion that you nevertheless won't see coming until it's too late)
The answer is contained in Tracy Letts's remarkable play Bug. Shaped like a horror story--the kind that any normal playwright and director would have put on celluloid rather than on stage--Bug mines the paranoid depths of the human soul, discovering there reasons for apathy, murder, and self-destruction of tragic proportions. It is, perversely, enormous vicarious fun and affectingly terrifying, or at least terrifyingly affecting.
Bug begins with a woman hiding out in a motel room (an homage to Psycho, perhaps?). Her name is Agnes White, and she's isolated herself here in this Oklahoma motor lodge because her abusive husband Jerry has just been released from jail. Agnes's panic is palpable, especially when the phone keeps ringing but nobody seems to be on the line; she smokes, drinks, and frets silently in near-darkness.
Then Agnes's friend R.C. turns up with a young stranger in tow, Peter Evans. Quiet and mysterious in a maverick-cowboy sort of way, Peter is also vaguely dangerous, which probably makes him even more attractive to Agnes than he'd otherwise be, and against her (and certainly our) better judgment--despite and also because of her predicament--she lets him stay overnight.
It should not surprise you to learn that Jerry shows up, too, and that Peter and Agnes eventually become involved. As Act One nears its close, we find a naked Peter in bed with an equally naked Agnes, searching among the bedclothes for a bug that he says has bitten him on the wrist. He finds it, and even though Agnes can't quite make it out, she humors him as he strips the bed and searches for more critters. Annoyed that Agnes refers to his prey as "he," Peter hypothesizes that it could be a matriarch bug, one that may have laid thousands of eggs in their room.
In Act Two, Peter is on the case: he is convinced that the room is infested (even though, as Agnes and R.C. sensibly point out, no other guest at the motel has reported seeing any insects whatsoever), and somehow linked into a vast and sinister conspiracy that involves such disparate events as the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana and the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh.
The question is: will Agnes believe in Peter's obsession, or will she manage to free herself from this increasingly unhinged man?
The other question is: will Jerry somehow return, and is he in any way involved with this weird plot?
Oh, and there's still one more question: Could Peter be right? Why does an Army doctor named Sweet turn up suddenly, claiming to be Peter's psychiatrist, but equipped with information about Agnes that he has no obvious reason to know?
Why does a pizza get delivered to Agnes' room, even though neither she nor Peter remembers ordering it?
I'm not telling, of course; read Bug to find out how it all plays out (and climaxes in a spectacular and inevitable conclusion that you nevertheless won't see coming until it's too late)
February 5, 2021
Thrilling and dangerous and very sad. Friedkin’s movie of it is effective as well.
January 10, 2015
Really well paces with great.finale
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews