- Carrie Coon delivers a powerful, emotionally charged performance as Agnes in Tracy Letts’s Bug on Broadway.
- The Samuel J. Friedman production, directed by David Cromer, reframes the play’s paranoia for today’s conspiracy-saturated climate.
- Namir Smallwood’s gentler Peter shifts the play’s balance, letting Coon’s character’s unraveling take center stage.
H2: A fierce lead anchors a timely revival
Carrie Coon’s turn as Agnes in Tracy Letts’s Bug is the kind of performance that stops an audience in its tracks. Now playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, this Broadway revival leans into the play’s psychological horror and contemporary resonance. Coon gives Agnes a brittle toughness that dissolves into vulnerability, making the character’s slide into a conspiratorial world both alarming and heartbreakingly plausible.
H3: Direction and tone — a production closer to home
Director David Cromer’s staging softens some of the play’s earlier downtown extremity and emphasizes intimacy. Where the original production felt like an outsize freakout, Cromer’s version locates the terror inside ordinary spaces — a motel room, a lonely life — which makes the paranoia feel disturbingly familiar. The result is less spectacle, more slow-burn atmosphere: small jolts, clinical detail, and a mounting sense of claustrophobia.
H3: Namir Smallwood and the shift in focus
Namir Smallwood’s Peter is less manic than past portrayals, traded for a quieter, more human presence. That choice reshapes the play’s center: Coon’s Agnes becomes the emotional and dramatic fulcrum. Smallwood’s gentler Peter lures Agnes into belief and alliance, but it’s Coon who carries the play’s weight, her rage and tenderness giving the production its pulse.
H2: Why Bug feels more urgent now
Written decades ago by Tracy Letts, Bug was always a disquieting American gothic. In 2026, its themes land with fresh force. Conspiracy theories that once lived on the fringes are now woven into everyday political conversation, and the play’s exploration of how loneliness and trauma can open someone to radical ideas feels especially relevant. The play asks — with clinical cruelty and compassion — how ordinary people fall into extraordinary paranoia.
H3: Performance highlights and production details
Coon’s work is the standout: terse, explosive, and emotionally layered. The ensemble around her, including Jennifer Engstrom in supporting turns, helps build the insular world Agnes inhabits. The Samuel J. Friedman staging favors tight lighting and realistic set detail, enhancing the sense that the horror is not theatrical ornament but lived experience.
H2: Final take
This Bug is a lean, tense revival anchored by Carrie Coon’s ferocious lead performance. Under Cromer’s direction and with Namir Smallwood’s recalibrated Peter, Tracy Letts’s play reads as a warning and a portrait — a cautionary, intimate study of how fear and grief can mutate into collective delusion. For theatergoers interested in a dark, urgent drama, this production is a must-see.
Image Referance: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/theater/bug-review-carrie-coon.html
