Agnes White (Robin Christ) is no angel. She smokes, she drinks, she uses cocaine and she freebases. She lives in a motel beside a highway on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. When we first meet her, she is bedraggled and being harassed by late-night phone calls. Thus begins Tracy Letts's tale, Bug, currently playing at Cygnet Theater.
Agnes' lesbian friend R. C. (Monique Gaffney) brings over Peter Evans (John DeCarlo), a shy drifter. He ends up spending the night on Agnes' floor, soon graduating to her bed. Thus starts their strange relationship. Agnes is 44 and Peter is 27. Add to the mix her phone-calling, physically abusive ex-husband, Jerry Goss (an easily hateable Manny Fernandes), who has recently been released from jail. He is intent on moving in and getting back to his old ways of beating Agnes.
Bug, under Sean Murray's able direction, is owned by Christ and DeCarlo. During most of the just-under- two-hour playing time, these two convince us that there are bugs everywhere in that motel room, even on our programs. This is a gritty drama about two people being dominated by bugs; they grow as aphids under Peter's skin, creating rashes and sores on both of them. By the second act, we feel the infestation is real and respond with laughter both humorous and nervous.
Sound designer George Ye inserts the sound of helicopters flying overheard. Is it just a random chopper or a chopper flying in a search pattern, looking for somebody? Are the bugs as real as Peter and Agnes contest they are, or is it their overly fertile imaginations? Enter Dr. Sweet (Jim Chovick) to bring some sense to this madness before us. Chovick puts up an excellent fight for his character's opinion. Sadly, he doesn't prevail.
Sean Murray's set is dingy, cluttered, messy, just like Agnes' life. Eric Lotze's lighting is dismally dim adding to the eeriness of Tracy Letts's play. Properties by Bonnie Durben with Lesley Fitzpatrick and Maggie Thompson only add to the clutter that is Agnes's. Veronica Murphy provides all but a couple of the costumes (though not the attire for the leads in the nude scenes).
