Carrie Coon’s “Bug” Revival Feels Uncomfortably Real in a Paranoid Age
Good evening. Tonight, the spotlight is on Broadway, where Carrie Coon is delivering a performance that’s shaking audiences in a very quiet, unsettling way. The revival of Tracy Letts’s play “Bug” has arrived at a moment when fear, suspicion and conspiracy feel less like fiction and more like daily background noise. And that timing matters.
Coon plays Agnes, a lonely waitress hiding out in a rundown Oklahoma motel room. She’s cut off from the world, nursing old wounds and trying to stay invisible. Then a stranger wanders into her life. His name is Peter, a drifting Gulf War veteran, played here by Namir Smallwood. At first, he seems harmless. Polite. Almost gentle. He stays for a drink. He stays for the night. And slowly, something starts to slip.
Peter becomes convinced that his body is under attack, that unseen forces are crawling beneath his skin, that the government is watching and experimenting. Agnes doesn’t believe him at first. But she listens. And then she leans in. What follows is not a loud descent into madness, but a quiet, intimate one. Two isolated people building a private universe where fear starts to feel like meaning.
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What makes this revival hit so hard is the way Coon plays Agnes. She isn’t naïve or foolish. She’s observant. She’s funny. And she’s choosing to believe because belief gives her something solid to hold onto. In this version of “Bug,” the story isn’t about being tricked. It’s about choosing connection, even if that connection comes wrapped in paranoia.
The production is stark. One room. Almost nowhere to hide. Director David Cromer keeps the world outside the motel room in darkness, which makes the space feel like the last safe place on earth. As Agnes and Peter bond, the room shrinks emotionally. Their intimacy deepens. And by the time things turn frightening, it feels inevitable.
This play was first written in the mid-1990s, inspired by real-world extremism and conspiracy thinking. But in 2026, it lands differently. Audiences now recognize this mindset. It feels familiar. Online forums, viral theories and deep mistrust of institutions have made this kind of thinking almost ordinary.
Carrie Coon’s performance taps into that reality. She shows how pain looks for structure. How grief looks for patterns. And how love, or the need for it, can make almost anything feel believable.
As the final moments unfold, “Bug” doesn’t offer comfort or easy answers. It leaves us with something colder and more honest. In a world full of noise and suspicion, the most dangerous thing might be how comforting it feels to believe together.
That’s the latest from the stage. I’m wrapping it up here and we’ll be watching closely as this production continues to spark conversation far beyond the theater walls.
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