If only “Bug” were a quaint period piece, we could watch it and laugh at how people in the ’90s were paranoid nutjobs.
But a horror story about conspiracy theories and fears of bioengineered threats, constant surveillance and intrusive government schemes is uncomfortably on the nose right now.
While “Bug” premiered in 1996, it’s been back in the headlines thanks to a Broadway production earlier this year starring University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Carrie Coon.
Milwaukee’s scrappy The Constructivists opened a new production of Tracy Letts’ play April 25 at the Broadway Theatre Center, directed by Maya Danks. Letts’ concoction of edgy comedy, terror and violence certainly fits The Constructivists’ dark aesthetic. Nothing signals trouble ahead quite like the amount of cigarette- and pot-smoking, liquor swilling and cocaine snorting in this story.
Divorced waitress Agnes (Jaimelyn Gray) is living in a cheap Oklahoma motel room, partly for distance from violent ex-husband Goss (Matt Specht). She’s lonely and troubled by a grief whose nature I’d rather not spoil. When coworker R.C. (Tess Cinpinski) brings the strange Peter (Joe Lino) along, he and Agnes connect.
From the beginning Peter, a Gulf War veteran, talks about conspiracies, surveillance and the government coming after him. When he appears to find a bug bite on his body, his paranoia and obsessive behavior go turbo, and he pulls Agnes into his mental hothouse.
Gray gives a convincing performance as this struggling working-class woman whose need for connection overrides the common sense that should protect her. It’s entertaining to see the physically robust Lino cringe so much in early scenes. But as his paranoia surges, he becomes more powerful. His Peter also has the smart-sounding glibness that can create a disturbing link between any two random facts.
Specht’s Goss is casually malevolent in a way that Dennis Hopper might approve.
Being a ’90s play, what “Bug” doesn’t see coming is the rise of giant technology corporations and their passion for control and surveillance. But even paranoids can’t imagine every thing that is out to get us.
If you go
The Constructivists perform “Bug” through May 9 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. Visit theconstructivists.org or call (414) 291-7800.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The conspiracy-drenched horror of ‘Bug’ feels all too timely
Reporting by Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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