BUG
by Tracy Letts, author of Killer Joe
Directed by Micheal Herman
This comic thriller pits two lost souls—a crack-addicted divorcee and a young veteran with trouble in his past—against a vast conspiracy of increasingly scary enemies.
Mature audiences only. Contains drug use, sex, violence, and nudity.
“The visceral wallop of Bug is likely to come as a shock even to fans of ‘Killer Joe’….Buckle up and brace yourself for the theater season’s wildest ride.” --Ben Brantley, New York Times, 3/1/04
Cast: Karen Moeller as Agnes, Moritz Burnard as Peter, Douglas Holtz as Jerry, Andrea Varda as R.C., and featuring Sarah Whelan as Dr. Sweet.
Opens Fri., Jan. 12, runs thru Sat., Feb. 3.
Shows are Wed.-Sat. evenings @ 8 pm
plus two Sunday matinees @ 2 pm:
Jan. 21 and Jan. 28. [No matinee Sun. 1/14]
Wednesday is student night! Students only $5.00 on Wednesdays.
Purchase Tickets Online HERE with BrownPaperTickets.com
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BUG
Delusional Parasitosis: A mistaken belief that one is being infested by parasites such as mites, lice, fleas, spiders, worms, bacteria, or other organisms.
The Story of Bug
Karen Moeller plays Agnes, a waitress hiding in a motel outside Oklahoma City. Agnes’ ex-husband Jerry (Doug Holtz), fresh out of prison, seems likely to ignore his restraining order.
R.C., Agnes’ best friend (Andrea Varda), shows up one evening with soft-spoken Peter (Moritz Burnard), a young vet who has disturbing theories about the world.
Bolstered by crack cocaine, the two fall in love, but Peter appears to be victim of a sinister conspiracy that manifests itself, slowly at first, as a massive bug infestation. According to Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review, “Peter initiates Agnes into his perspective so gently, that by the time they have crossed the boundaries of sanity, neither she nor the audience knows quite what’s happened.”
While R.C. tries in vain to be a reality check, an army psychiatrist named Dr. Sweet, played by Sarah Whelan, suddenly appears, with information she is not entirely willing to share. Her appearance ups the ante of terror for both Agnes and Peter, and leads to a shocking, yet inevitable, climax.
Tracy Letts (playwright) is an award-winning playwright and actor and a longstanding ensemble member with Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, appearing most recently in The Pillowman. As a playwright, Letts’ work includes Killer Joe, Bug, and The Man From Nebraska. He was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was named as one of Time’s "Best of 2003." A movie version of Bug, directed by William Friedken (The Exorcist) and starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, who originated the role of Peter off Broadway, is due out in early 2007.
Show Personnel -- previous local performances
Karen Moeller (Agnes) starred in The Weir and Much Ado About Nothing with Strollers Ltd., and Betty’s Summer Vacation with Mercury Players.
Moritz Burnard (Peter) appeared in Stage Q’s Corpus Christi, Mercury Players’ Cementville, and Encore Studio’s Real Life.
Andrea Varda (R.C.) starred in the two-person play Collected Stories with Strollers, and also appeared in Strollers’ Macbeth.
Doug Holtz (Jerry) was Sam Walton’s head in Mercury Players’ Walmartopia, and also appeared in Mercury’s Killer Joe, as well as Stage Q’s Corpus Christi and First Banana’s Tracers.
Sarah Whelan (Dr. Sweet), our most distinguished grande dame of Madison theater, has performed nationally and internationally for 50 years. Notable Madison appearances were Eleanor in A Lion in Winter (Strollers), Hannah in Hannah Free (Stage Q), and Lenore in Walmartopia.
Micheal Herman
(director) has directed Balm in Gilead, The Goat, and The Glory of
Living for Mercury Players Theatre, and The Most Fabulous Story and
The Sum of Us for Stage Q.
NEW YORK TIMES THEATER REVIEW
Motel Tale: Down and Out (and Itchy and Scratchy) in Oklahoma
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: March 1, 2004, Monday
Tears, gasps, laughter, yawns: theater routinely elicits all these responses. But have you ever been to a play that made you itch all over? That's just one of the distinctive accomplishments of ''Bug,'' the obscenely exciting play by Tracy Letts that opened last night in a production by the Barrow Street Theater.
Paranoia festers in the skin, as provokingly physical as a poison ivy rash, in this lurid story of a man, a woman and a whole lot of really tiny critters. Scratching is the least of what its characters do to try to ease their discomfort. But their ain't no cure for their condition. Be warned: it is very contagious.
The visceral wallop of ''Bug'' is likely to come as a shock even to fans of Mr. Letts's ''Killer Joe,'' the irresistibly nasty comedy about homicidal trailer trash that was an Off Broadway hit six years ago. ''Killer Joe'' was tense, creepy and a hoot, and it let you keep a sardonic distance from its vicious, moronic characters.
''Bug,'' which was staged in London in 1996, inspires laughs, all right, but of a much more uneasy variety. Directed with expert and sadistic timing by Dexter Bullard, and acted by a smashing cast led by Shannon Cochran and Michael Shannon, this production ultimately drags you by force into the fear and squalor onstage.
While it could hardly be described as understated, ''Bug'' has a subtlety and sureness of composition that testifies to top-flight craftsmanship. Mr. Letts, in other words, is much more than a shock artist, although if you're in a mood for cheap thrills, he provides plenty of those, too.
The play's often violent action, punctuated by long and unnerving stretches of quiet, takes place in a photo-realistically generic motel room outside Oklahoma City. (Lauren Helpern is the dead-on set designer.) These tight quarters are home to Agnes White (Ms. Cochran), an anxious divorce with a fondness for cocaine and solitude.
Agnes has sworn off men, which is understandable once you meet her ex-husband, Jerry Goss (Michael Cullen), who is just out of prison and eager to return to the woman he loves to beat up on. Still, she finds it hard to resist the handsome if rather peculiar stranger that her best friend, a down-to-earth lesbian named R. C. (Amy Landecker), brings to visit. That's the soft-spoken Peter Evans (Mr. Shannon), who has disturbing theories about the world that somehow exactly fit Agnes's need for answers.
''Bug,'' which also features Reed Birney in a small but indelible role, is shaped, as so many plays are, by how two people fall in love. In Agnes and Peter's case this process is speeded by white powder and neat vodka, substances known to make people share secrets and shed clothes more quickly than they might otherwise. But while the couple spend a lot of time in a complete and clinical state of nudity, it's the secrets that count more than the sex.
Though I'm, er, itching to tell you what the secrets are, it's better to let the play unfold them, bit by tantalizing bit. The dialogue through which this is achieved is choice, evidence of a poetic ear for blue-collar coarseness and the conspiracy theories so cherished by Americans. But ''Bug'' also makes efficient use of nonverbal devices more often associated with cinema.
Mr. Bullard brings a Hitchockian focus to his staging. You find yourself concentrating on a smoke detector or a bathroom door as if you were watching them in close-up. And you're likely
to discover that even if you arrive at ''Bug'' without drugs or alcohol in your system -- a good idea by the way -- you'll wind up sharing the demented logic of Peter's philosophy, in your gut if not in your mind. He initiates Agnes into his perspective so gently, that by the time they have crossed the boundaries of sanity, neither she nor the audience knows quite what's happened.
It's hard to imagine more accomplished guides into this strange land than Mr. Shannon and Ms. Cochran. Bringing to mind an off-center, intelligent Leonardo DiCaprio, Mr. Shannon is an uncanny blend of calm and agitation, as tics disrupt his symmetrical features like ripples on a glassy pond. I've seldom seen a young actor turn up the volume of a performance so slowly and skillfully. When Peter finally raises his voice, it's a big deal.
Ms. Cochran is a last-minute substitute for a marquee name: Amanda Plummer, who left the show just before previews started. (Ms. Plummer and Mr. Shannon both appeared to fine advantage in ''Killer Joe.'') Not to worry. Ms. Cochran starred in ''Bug'' in London, and she wears her old role as easily and fetchingly as she does the denim hot pants in which she is seen in the the stunning, lonely tableau that opens the play.
Her Agnes impresses at first by her sheer ordinariness, despite her lean, sexy body. She's an addled, wary everywoman you might see roving the aisles of a Wal-Mart, noticeable only for the way she keeps looking over her shoulder. And this is precisely what makes this Agnes the ideal surrogate for the audience as she is seduced into Peter's worldview. Like Mr. Shannon's, Ms. Cochran's performance keeps growing in size and sharpness, until Agnes explodes into a triumphant disquisition of perfectly coherent insanity.
There's not a false note in the supporting performances. And the work by the technical team is superb. This includes Tyler Micoleau's lighting, which isn't afraid to embrace darkness, and Brian Ronan's award-worthy sound design, which turns out to be crucial in revealing character.
One hint: watch Mr.
Shannon's face when a mechanical cricket sound is first heard. That's the signal
that a window has been opened irrevocably onto a shadowy, rough and dangerous
land. Buckle up and brace yourself for the theater season's wildest ride.
BUG
By Tracy Letts; directed by Dexter Bullard; sets by Lauren Helpern; lighting by
Tyler Micoleau; sound by Brian Ronan; costumes by Kim Gill; props, Faye Armon;
fight director, J. David Brimmer; general manager, Dana Matthow; company
manager, Cris Buchner; production stage manager, Richard A. Hodge; production
manager, Brian Duea. Presented by the Barrow Street Theater, Scott Morfee, Amy
Danis and Mark Johannes, in association with Planetearth Partners. At 27 Barrow
Street, Greenwich Village.
WITH: Shannon Cochran (Agnes White), Amy Landecker (R. C.), Michael Shannon
(Peter Evans), Michael Cullen (Jerry Goss) and Reed Birney (Dr. Sweet).
PRESS
Mercury's 'Bug' disturbs, thrills
By
Rena Archwamety
Special to The Capital Times
Fear and love, no matter what their objects, can strike with terrifying force.
These two emotions collide and lead to self-destruction in "Bug," a Mercury Players Theatre production opening this weekend at the Bartell Theatre. A movie version of this psychological thriller by Tracy Letts is also scheduled to be released nationwide this spring.
The play, directed by Micheal
She falls for a mysterious drifter from the panhandle, Peter, who seems well-intentioned at first, but soon draws Agnes into his dark, private reality.
Peter,
played by Moritz Burnard, claims to be a military veteran who was subjected to
extensive and painful medical experimentation by the government. Believing that
a live insect has been implanted in him as part of an elaborate and sinister
plot, he convinces Agnes that they have both been infested with bugs, and he
attempts to exterminate them by bleeding and digging them out of their bodies.
"Bug" is meant to burrow under the audience's skin, too.
As Agnes falls further and further into Peter's supposed delusion, reality blurs and suspense turns to horror. The play is unsettling visually as well as psychologically, with drug use, full frontal nudity and plenty of blood and open sores.
The realism of the scenes hits hard, so anyone with a sensitive stomach should stay home or sit near an exit. The theater's Web site advises "mature audiences only."
Moeller is outstanding as Agnes, playing her with a vulnerability that made it believable that she would give up her sanity before facing the prospect of loneliness.
Douglas Holtz was also exceptional in his multilayered characterization of Agnes' ex-con ex-husband Jerry. Underneath all the abusive outbursts, his mannerisms were casual and carefree, his love for Agnes sincere, and in the end his head was the one most level.
Burnard was convincing as a paranoid schizophrenic haunted by a dark past, though his character came off more as a shy and awkward youth than as a veteran who spent several years of his adult life in a military hospital. Consequently, the chemistry between Peter and Agnes seemed to be leading in an Oedipal direction, especially after a subplot involving Agnes' long-lost son.
Pacing was slow at the beginning, but soon gathered suspense and built to an explosive second half. The set added to the creepy, disturbing atmosphere, particularly after intermission when ribbons of flypaper hung from the ceiling and cans of Raid littered the floor.
Acting was solid, and while the shock value at times overshadowed the dramatic quality, the play was emotionally loaded and unquestionably thrilling.
"Bug" will delight some and repulse others, but love it or not, it will make your skin crawl.