B'way Review: Bug

Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood in Bug.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Since its London premiere in 1996, Tracey Letts’ riveting psycho-thriller Bug has become more relevant and therefore even scarier. Currently revived in a forceful production from Steppenwolf Theater Company and director David Cromer, presented on Broadway by Manhattan Theater Club, Bug explores the paranoid fantasies of a conspiracy theorist and how his fear of phantom big-government forces destroy his life and that of everyone around him. In the years since its London opening and Obie-winning Off-Broadway run in 2004, our national fever dreams have intensified, fed by the ravings of our unhinged president and the unrestrained avalanche of disinformation spewing out of the Internet. Twenty years ago, this was a crackling good horror story. Now it’s all too real. 

Set in a grubby Oklahoma motel room (memorably shoddy set design by Takeshi Kata), the plot focuses on two pathetic loners, beset by tragedy, filling up their empty souls and rationalizing their misery with insane convictions of Big-Brother mind control. Agnes (a magnificently tortured Carrie Coon, Letts’ spouse) is scraping by as a cocktail waitress, contending with an abusive ex-husband just out of stir who wants back in her life. She meets Peter (a haunted and numb Namir Smallwood), a seemingly sympathetic drifter who gradually reveals a dangerous belief system. A persistent toothache and an insect sighting are early warning signs that all is not right with Peter. As Peter draws Agnes into his maze of misconceptions, she abandons all reason and joins him in a demented nightmarescape (Kata’s increasingly spooky set, Heather Gilbert’s unsettling lighting and Josh Schmidt’s eerie sound design complete the Twilight Zone-like environment.)

B'way Update: Bug; Cats

Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood in 
Bug at Steppenwolf Theater.
Credit: Michael Brosilow

Manhattan Theater Club will present the Broadway debut of Tracey Letts' Bug at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater with performances beginning Dec. 17 and opening on Jan. 8, 2026. The production, directed by Tony winner David Cromer (The Band's Visit, Good Night and Good Luck) comes to Broadway after a 2021 run at Chicago's Steppenwolfe Theater. Bug premiered in London in 1996 and after American productions in Ithaca, NY, Washington, DC, and Chicago, the play premiere Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater in 2004. Michael Shannon recreated his role from the London and Off-Broadway productions in the 2006 film version directed by William Friedkin.

Set in a seedy motel room, cocktail waitress Agnes encounters Gulf War vet Peter who draws her into his paranoid conspiracy theories involving UFOs, the war in Iraq, the Oklahoma City bombing, cult suicides and government experiments on soldiers. The cast includes Tony and Emmy nominee and Letts' wife Carrie Coon (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Gilded Age, The White Lotus) as Agnes White, Namir Smallwood (Pass Over) as Peter Evans, Randall Arney (Steppenwolf’s You Can’t Take it With You, True West) as Dr. Sweet, Jennifer Engstrom (Sweet Bird of Youth at Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) as R.C., and Steve Key (Sweat, Off-Broadway: Blue Surge, The Effect) as Jerry Goss.

New Broadway Openings for 2021

While New York City is slowly reopening from the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the return of Broadway and other stages is still far in the future. But there is a glimmer of hope. Several Main Stem productions have announced new dates for previews and openings, all in 2021 and the earliest dates are March 1. The Minutes by Tracey Letts will begin previews at the Cort Theater on next March 1 with an opening set for March 15, one year after its originally projected premiere. The dark comedy about a secretive town council meeting has had a bumpy road to Broadway. After its Steppenwolf Theater Company debut in Chicago in 2017, the play was set to open on Broadway in 2018, but was delayed. The 2020 production was to have been directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro (Letts' August: Osage County) and feature the playwright, Armie Hammer, Ian Barford (Letts' Linda Vista), Blair Brown, Cliff Chamberlain, K. Todd Freeman, Danny McCarthy, Jessie Mueller, Sally Murphy, Austin Pendleton, and Jeff Still. 

The fourth Broadway production of David Mamet's American Buffalo is now set to begin previews at Circle in the Square on March 24 with an opening slated for April 14, also a year from its original debut. The three-character play about small-time crooks planning a heist of a coin collection stars Laurence Fishburne, Oscar winner Sam Rockwell, and Darren Criss. Neil Pepe directs. Previous productions have starred Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, and John Leguizamo. 

Broadway Update: Meryl Streep and Beth Leavel Switch Roles

Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada

In a rare case of show-biz serendipity, three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep and Tony winner Beth Leavel, queens of their respective media, will switch roles. It was just announced that Leavel will take on Miranda Priestley the dictatorial fashion editor, in the musical version of The Devil Wears Prada which will open in Chicago in July 2021, presumably followed by a Broadway opening in 2021-22. Elton John will compose the music, Shaina Taub the lyrics, Paul Rudnick the book and Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro directs. Streep won a Golden Globe for the 2007 movie edition.

Meanwhile Streep is playing Dee Dee Allen, the washed-up Broadway star aiming for publicity by supporting a lesbian high-school student, in The Prom for

Beth Leavel

Netflix. Leavel originated the role in the stage version which was named Outstanding Musical by the Drama Desk. There is an extremely funny sight gag involving the DD Award itself. Let's hope it makes the cut for the screenplay and Netflix viewers who are not obsessed with Broadway will get the joke. The Netflix edition will also star Nicole Kidman, Kerry Washington, James Corden, Awkafina, Ariana Grande, Keegan-Michael Key and Andrew Rannells. It will be available for streaming in November.

In other casting news, the potentially controversial Michael Jackson musical, MJ, has announced its lead. The gloved one will be played by Ephraim Sykes who gave a stunning performance as David Ruffin, the most tormented Temptation in Ain't Too

Ephraim Sykes

Proud (he got my Tony vote for Best Featured Actor in a Musical). MJ which features a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, is scheduled to open at the Neil Simon Theater on Aug. 13. There is no word on how the show will address accusations of child molestation against the music legend, if at all. According to People Magazine, the story takes place in 1992 when Jackson is releasing his Dangerous album. The allegations of abuse did not begin until 1993. Convenient, huh?

2019-20 Broadway Season Forecast

July is here and that means the 2018-19 Broadway season is officially done with and the next one is underway. Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, the revival of Terrence McNally's 1988 two-hander, was the first official production of the season, opening in May. The summer is pretty slow this year with only two Broadway openings confirmed--Moulin Rouge, the stage version of Baz Luhrmann's gaudy and superficial 2001 film musical and Sea Wall/A Life, a transfer of a pair of solo pieces starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge which played the Public Theater earlier this year. Tea at Five, the one-woman play starring Faye Dunaway as Katharine Hepburn, was supposed to open sometime during the summer, as was an all-female staging of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. But neither ever secured a theater and their future is uncertain. Tea at Five is now playing Boston's Huntington Theater through July 14.

Here's a rundown of announced Broadway openings for 2019-20:

Charlie Cox, Zawe Ashton, and Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal.
Credit: Marc Brenner

Betrayal: Harold Pinter's reverse-chronicle triangle drama returns to Broadway for its third revival with Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox making their Broadway debuts after a smashing success in London's West End. (Original: 1980 with Raul Julia, Blythe Danner, and Roy Scheider, Reprised in 2001 with Liev Schreiber, Juliette Binoche and John Slattery, and in 2013 with Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Rafe Spall). (Jacobs/Sept. 15)

Derren Brown: Secret--The magician and mentalist brings his Drama Desk winning show to Broadway after a run at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2017.

The Height of the Storm--Manhattan Theater Club opens its Broadway season with this drama by French playwright Florian Zeller starring Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce repeating their London performances as a couple who, not unlike the protagonists of Zeller's plays The Father and The Mother, face uncertainty and despair after decades of marriage.

3 Degrees of Separation Among Best Picture Nominees

Michael Stuhlbarg

Let's play three degrees of separation among this year's front-runners for the Oscars. Michael Stuhlbarg is in three of this year's possible Best Picture Oscar nominees--Call Me By Your Name, The Shape of Water, and The Post. Timothee Chalamant is touted as Best Actor for Call Me By Your Name and has a small role in Ladybird. Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and Tony winning actor Tracey Letts is in The Post and Ladybird (Letts also starred in The Lovers, a small independent film). Laurie Metcalf is a favorite for Best Supporting Actress for Ladybird as Letts' wife and Saoirse Ronan's mother. She won a Tony last year for A Doll's House Part 2. Stephen McKinley Henderson was in the replacement company of Doll's House and has a supporting role in Ladybird. Lucas Hedges is in both Ladybird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Lois Smith is also in Ladybird and Marjorie Prime--she also did the play version and she is nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for the movie.

Broadway Goes to the Beach for 2017-18

The Spongebob Musical
Credit: Joan Marcus

Broadway is headed to the beach for the 2017-18 season. Two new musicals with seaside settings, The Spongebob Musical and Escape to Margaritaville, have just announced definite dates for the fall. The Spongebob Musical, based on Spongebob Squarepants, the popular NIckelodeon cartoon series, will wash up at the Palace Theatre for previews beginning Nov. 6 before it officially docks for a Dec. 4 opening. The family-oriented musical premiered at Chicago's Oriental Theater last year and features original songs by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Sara Bareilles (Waitress), Cyndi Lauper (Kinky Boots), John Legend, The Flaming Lips, They Might Be Giants, and T.I. with an addition song by David Bowie and additional lyrics by Jonathan Coulton. Tina Landau (Superior Donuts, Bells Are Ringing) directs. Leads from the Chicago

Spongebob: "I'm going to Broadway!"

run will repeat their performances including Ethan Slater as the titular sponge, Gavin Lee (Mary Poppins) as the sour octopus Squidward, Lilli Cooper (Spring Awakening, daughter of Tony winner Chuck Cooper) as Texas squirrel Sandy Cheeks, and Danny Skinner as dim-bulb starfish Patrick. BTW, Lauper is also set to do the score for Working Girl. a stage version of the 1988 film comedy.

Escape from Margaritaville is derived from the music of Jimmy Buffett (you know, he had that big hit with the tune about the outlawed shaker of salt), and is set for previews at the Marquis on Feb. 16 before a March 15 opening. Currently playing at the La Jolla Theatre and ready to tour New Orleans, Huston, and Chicago before its Broadway bow, the show's plot concerns a laid-back bartender at a beachside resort falling in love with a urban-oriented tourist. Christopher Ashley (Come from Away) directs. Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) is music supervisor. Kitt will also serve in the same capacity for Jagged Little Pill, a musical based on Alanis Morrisette's Grammy-winning output, which will have a reading starring Idina Menzel. The Wicked Tony winner is scheduled to star in Joshua Harmon's Skintight Off-Broadway, so she is not set to appear in Pill's planned April 2018 run at the American Repertory Theatre.

Tom Hanks and 'Lucky Guy' Tony Frontrunners

Tom Hanks can move his two Oscars to the side of the mantelpiece to make room for the Best Actor in a Play Tony he's bound to win for his Broadway debut in Lucky Guy which opened this week. His closest competition is probably Nathan Lane in The Nance and Tracey Letts in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Lane already has two Tonys (for Forum and The Producers) while Letts' show closed months ago. Hanks gives a terrific performance as the gritty tabloid columnist Mike McAlary. He gets to swear, cry, deal with cancer, get high on booze and morphine, feel guilty for causing a corrupt cop to commit suicide, and deliver a big emotional wrap-up speech at the end. It's got Tony-bait written all over it. I'll probably be voting for Letts whose challenge was greater having to justify the sadomasochistic behavior of George in a play usually dominated by whoever plays Martha.

Lucky itself is a bit of jumble, but it will make great television to have playwright Nora Ephron honored posthumously. So far, The Other Place is its only competition. Grace and Dead Accounts shuttered long ago and Breakfast at Tiffany's got a lukewarm reception. The Nance and The Assembled Parties have yet to open, but I doubt they'll be able to tackle Lucky Guy.