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[0:00] Jeff Malone: Welcome to Half Hour with Jeff & Richie, the podcast where we explore the latest shows we see, sharing our insights and opinions on the performances, storylines, and everything in between. In today's episode, we're discussing the Broadway production of Bug, playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York City. Whether you cannot catch the show in person or you want to expand your thoughts after seeing it, this episode is for you. And as always, we want to inform you that this episode will contain spoilers, so if you're ready to dive into this production, stick around with us. I'm Jeff.

[0:27] Richie Grasso: And I'm Richie, and we're thrilled to be your hosts for this episode. But before we start the conversation about Bug, here are a few words from our advertisers. Welcome, everyone, to a new episode of Half Hour with Jeff & Richie. Today, we're discussing Bug. From Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts of August: Osage County and Tony Award-winning director David Cromer of Prayer for the French Republic and The Band's Visit comes the Broadway premiere of Steppenwolf's acclaimed staging of a cult classic about an unexpected and intense romance between a lonely waitress, played by Carrie Coon, and a mysterious drifter, played by Namir Smallwood. What begins as a simple connection between two broken people in a seedy Oklahoma motel room twists into something far more dangerous. When reality slips out of grasp, paranoia, delusion, and conspiracy take over in this sexy psychological thriller. Bug is presented by Manhattan Theatre Club.

[1:14] Jeff Malone: All right, so let's get into our theater hot take for Bug. I found that in a world drowning in conspiracy theories, Bug might be the most honest look at how a conspiracist sees the world from one stray idea to a full-blown apocalypse.

[1:35] Richie Grasso: That was good. My hot take is strength—strong performances, strong writing, strong scenic costume lighting direction. This is strong theater. At a time where sometimes we see a lot of weaker theater or, you know, misguided theater, this is well executed all around. It is certainly one of the strongest things I've seen. I almost want to go back and kind of dive in more and catch more clues. It is thrilling, and I am really looking forward to talking about it more.

[1:59] Jeff Malone: All righty, so let's get into the overall plot concept and maybe history of the piece here as well.

[2:04] Richie Grasso: Yeah, this has been around for a while. It's Tracy Letts' second play, I believe, that he wrote a while back. It's never been on Broadway before. It's been performed in many ways. There's been a movie version. It's thrilling, and to see this on Broadway, you know, it's so interesting. The title is so interesting because the play refers to literal bugs. It talks about bugging the room, the government, conspiracy theory. It talks about what bugs mean in our life, right? But also there's so many layers to this. This whole idea that we're in this one location the whole time and that we're seeing these characters evolve and evolve. Dare I say, it almost feels like I'm watching an Alfred Hitchcock piece.

There's this mystery. When you watch Psycho or you watch The Birds, you watch so many Alfred Hitchcock pieces. Those are just the popular ones. You're not beat over the head with the message right away or the mission of this piece. You're just looking at characters entering. You're wondering. I actually go back to the very beginning when Carrie Coon's character is just standing there. She's just looking out the door, and the door's open. You hear the trucks going by, and she's smoking a cigarette, and you're in stillness and silence, and you're like, what is... It's immediate that we need to make it clear to the audience that there is nothing going on. Nothing going on at all. We're just sitting in this room, and there's so much to dive into from there, but I will say, you know, strictly from a direction and a pacing standpoint of the play, Act Two really moves.

Act One, I remember getting Tim's permission to say, Act One kind of moves slow, and I was like, no, Act One moved slow on purpose, because I think it needed to execute this idea that these people don't have anything going on. Yeah, they work a little bit, but what was her obsession with the drug use, going to the liquor store, drinking, drinking, drug use, drug use. They're not really eating. They're not really socializing. They're not really going out. They can barely get out of bed and leave this area, so it becomes like the what goes on behind closed doors mentality, the whole... And I will say this from the start, the famous saying of the idle brain. The idle brain is the devil's playground.

We've heard that in a lot of ways, right? When you're not staying, socializing, and keeping up with... And you're kind of cocooning yourself. There's the bug reference, right? What does that do to you? And what does that do to the people around you? And when people come into their life, your life, how does that affect you? We could go down a whole rabbit hole with that.

[4:37] Richie Grasso: Yeah. I find what I really kind of respond to well with Tracy in these more psychological thriller type pieces that he writes is it's always a very slow build. It's a slow build. In the beginning, you're just watching and observing and listening to what's going on. And at the end, I always find that there's going to be something big. I don't expect going to a Tracy Letts play and saying, nothing's going to happen at the end. Because in the beginning, you're figuring it out. Oh, this is interesting. Oh, that's interesting. And when you kind of have to start playing into the title here, and it's like, bug, what does bug mean? Like you said, is it the physical actual bug or is it the bugging of the room from the government?

And I think where we bring in this idea of conspiracy into the play, and the fact that this is even written in the mid-90s, when it feels like it was written yesterday, I'm like, wow, I'm watching this and I'm saying, oh, we have to get into the mind here of what the persuasive is. We have to get and figure out where the moments happen within the piece that say, how did this one start latching on, another bug reference here, to what that one is saying? You know, and looking at that, and I'm saying, oh, that's kind of the idea of what a conspiracist is. But there's subtleties with, oh, did you see that? Do you see that bug? And she doesn't see it, and she doesn't see it. And the bug is just the metaphor for him persuading her to believe what he believes or what he thinks he sees, going dramatically downhill to the pulling out of the tooth and the bugs living in the mouth and cutting the bugs out of the body.

And when the other character brought Carrie back, and I do, and it was like, she has self-inflicted wounds on her. This is not bugs doing this, or the dermatologist told her it's not. But when you live in this world and you believe the people you believe, and you don't look at, you know, this is such commentary, right? If you're just in your own orbit, and you're not talking to other people, and you're not listening to other sides, and you're not putting yourselves out there, this is where these theories come from. If you only surround yourself with certain people in certain ways, and I think that's what I'm trying to say in a lot of this.

[6:59] Jeff Malone: Well, I think that there's a slight trust that Agnes is who Carrie Coon plays, and Peter is who Namir plays. So when Peter comes into this play, you kind of, he has this like uncertainty around him. He has this kind of like mysterious side to him. And Agnes, who was very vulnerable in the piece, is dealing with an ex-husband, is dealing with addiction, is dealing really with that like word around isolation that you're talking about, around how she is alone in this hotel room. She lives in a hotel room, and she is a waitress. And the loss of her child.

[7:40] Richie Grasso: And the loss of her child, yeah. So when Peter comes in, and he kind of presents this idea to her that he's been worked on by the government, he's an ex-vet, and all of this stuff has happened to the people that were around him, and now he's dealing with it as well when he was in the army. I think she kind of trusts that idea, that he is like a well-respected person, because he's coming from the army, and that, oh, I kind of can figure out and deal with the fact that, yeah, I think, you know, the medical field might be doing some of the stuff that he's talking about. And then when you go to the doctor later on, and you had even had this idea, like, did the doctor even go into the, was he actually killed in the hotel room?

But we're getting information from the doctor that he's there to take him, he was off his medication, he escaped, and so there is this whole, like, I don't mean to keep comparing it to, like, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but there's this whole, like, you don't know what's really going on at the end of Psycho, you realize that this was someone who was hospitalized, who was dealing with, and oh, now, you know, it's just when you unravel it, it all makes sense in that way. And at the end, you don't even really know what to believe, like, who's there, who is not, because you're in this vortex of just nothing but, I'm like, following this, like, this is wild, like, the way this is written, and how these actors are taking this story, and it just goes and goes, and it doesn't stop until it has to stop with the explosion at the end, it's like, it's like a ticking time bomb, and then we get to the end, boom, and then it's like, play over, right?

But I think that's where he's trying to get us into the idea of what a conspiracist really feels. They keep telling the story until it's actually fact in their mind. You know, we see that so much today, especially around what happened with COVID, and people were coming out saying it was created, and it was put in all of us, and he even references that in other things. Peter references that in the play, where he says, oh, AIDS was made, and these other diseases were made, and they were put into us, and now the same thing is happening with me, and I'm the one, I'm patient zero here that is going to be infecting the whole world with these bugs, and the whole bug is made up, but they kept telling the story until they saw the bug, and it was now real.

[10:07] Jeff Malone: And she's so desperate for someone to stay with her that she's willing to take this person, because people have left her. Her child has left, her friend is leaving, the ex-husband's leaving, and she feels so alone that she's so desperate to believe anything this guy says, because that's where, and of course, then there's this influence associated with, right, the liquor and the drug use is influential to what's going on in these scenes too. And, you know, then there's these outside things that I kept thinking, like, oh, yeah, they say, like, we're the only room dealing with this in this motel, right, so I must have brought it here, and he's convincing her, and then there's, I always, I kind of thought back to, like, why didn't the owners of this motel, like, just, like, break down the door?

[10:45] Richie Grasso: Right, well, I think that's where...

[10:48] Jeff Malone: There's other aspects of this.

[10:49] Richie Grasso: I think that's where you have to separate the two, and you have to say, okay, oh, no, they're hallucinating what's going on.

[10:55] Jeff Malone: Yeah.

[10:55] Richie Grasso: They're a little bit delusional in this.

[10:57] Jeff Malone: Which leads me to believe, like, we don't even, she says that she turned around in the grocery store and turned back, and her son was kidnapped, and they never found him again. That could be true, but also, were there issues that maybe the child was removed from the home? Maybe the child died in a different way, and they're forcing themselves to believe that it was the child that was kidnapped, and the child didn't get, we don't know, and that's what I love about Tracy Letts' playwriting, is you can leave there saying, it could be this, or it could be this, and that's cool that he lets the audience decide that.

[11:23] Richie Grasso: Totally. Very, very smart.

[11:25] Jeff Malone: Right. Well, I think this is a great time to take a quick break, and when we'll get back, we'll get into this actual production here with the direction, the actor performances, and the design.

[11:32] Richie Grasso: Okay, and we're back. So, let's start talking about the direction, and the actor performances, and the design of this production of Bug. So, Richie, what is really working with David Cromer's direction of Bug?

[11:46] Richie Grasso: Well, I've always been a big fan of David Cromer's work. I think he knows how to direct so well. I love a unit set that's not huge. When you're in this small space, and it's so much black border all around the space, you have to work in this space, and we could have had the bed center stage facing us, and the sink over here. It was this diagonal, like we were on the corner. We were on the cusp, and the way that he moved the actors, that they were always sitting, that you always saw the edge of the profile of an actor's body sitting, laying, when he's laying to all of the image, every inch of that space, when they're up getting the fire alarm ticking off, every inch of that space is used so brilliantly, that where the bathroom door is, and when they come out, and the main entry door, it's just a space that he felt comfortable working in, that the actors felt comfortable working in, not to mention his incredible work that he does with lighting designers.

I'm blown away by how he works with the designers, because it's very clear that this was a team effort, that these designers had to put sound, and lights, and costumes, and scenery together to tell this very specific play in this specific location, and he's just a master at his craft. I've always loved what David Cromer does. I know when I'm walking into a David Cromer play, I'm going to get good work.

[13:01] Jeff Malone: Right, well, and I look at David Cromer, and I say, okay, this is immersive in such a different way. I think what he really does well is he really immerses you into the play, even if it's not immersive around you, or you're not in an immersive space, but there's so much happening in the set, and there's so much happening with the actors, that I think he's directing so well, that you really kind of are captivated and brought in early on in the piece. You know, when we have actors like Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood in this piece, and they're playing the two main characters, and they're doing so much work, even when they don't have dialogue, we're really brought in with the direction and what they're doing by saying, oh, wow, look at her over there. The whole beginning of this play, I think, what would you say, is like five minutes of her just doing stage movement around the piece, and not saying anything?

[13:49] Richie Grasso: Well, when she's just picking up the phone, for example, and like, we think that that's just the ex-husband calling, but is it? We don't know if it's just, we don't know. It could be, but like, there's so many things you don't know what to believe in the beginning, and that's why the director allows you to kind of just ease in and take it in minute by minute. Take us on the journey. Don't spill the whole thing at the first five minutes to us.

[14:19] Jeff Malone: Right, and that's what starts this whole bugging movement, I think, within the play. Someone is calling, but it's just static. Is that them?

[15:55] Richie Grasso: Lighting to be a very extreme character in this piece because it really helped with telling the story. It really also helped with making this more of that psychological thriller idea. Your senses are being played with in this piece. You don't know who's coming through a door. You don't know who's going to pop out. It almost kind of had the teetering on horror moments where you're like, I think there was even one time that I jumped when someone came through the door and I was like, whoa. It also has this little bit of alien, futuristic feel like, oh, the aliens are coming to get us.

[16:57] Jeff Malone: And that's why with the set, I mean, it's just incredible that they were able to do the set changes the way they did and just feel like, with the stage management team and intermission being out there the whole 15 minutes setting all their contraptions and things. Yeah. Bug I loved because for me, you know, a big part of this piece is we have to lock our phones when we go. They go into those little yonder pouches. So you can't use your phone. I mean, if you wanted to use your phone during intermission, you could and they would unlock it. But you've got to go outside. But it's cold right now. So we're not going outside to use it. But that makes us sit more with the piece. And like we're sitting here at intermission and we're looking.

And yes, the stage hands are coming out and they're moving things around. And you're saying, oh, this is giving us the idea now that the room is actually bugged. They're putting all of the pieces in the room to kind of spy and listen on what Agnes and Peter are going through. And I'm saying, oh, that was a smart choice. And maybe that's not really intentional, but it felt intentional that we're watching them do this, you know. And I think like if we kind of get into the performances now by Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood, where do you think that kind of stood out for you with both of them and playing the two characters?

[18:11] Richie Grasso: They're both incredible. And I think, Carrie, we've seen in film. I don't know if I've ever seen Namir in anything, but I think they both work so well together. The pacing of the dialogue, it's a two-hour play. It feels like it goes by so fast. It's just moving. And I just think the way they're performing and the drug use throughout that they're doing, and then the way they are swatting the bugs at the end and the different stage makeup that's on them. It's just, they're just taking us into this world. I almost wish that we had close-up camera shots, almost like Sunset Boulevard, where we could have had like the camera and seeing their faces in some intense moments, like a film bird. That would have been very cool.

[18:46] Jeff Malone: Yeah. And I really would touch on something that Carrie is doing in here. Like I found, wow, very transformative in playing this role because we just saw her in the White Lotus. I have not really seen anything else that she's done, but I know she's in the Gilded Age and she's praised for her work in that show. And I look at this and I'm saying, she really is a great actor in being able to transform into the role that she is giving. She creates a character and takes you on the journey here. Like this woman is broken in the beginning of this piece and she needs to latch on to Peter in here. She needs to feel something. She has an ex-husband that is abusive and comes from a bad past here. But her addiction to the feeling of alcohol and drugs, and now this addiction to being in love with this new man, but this new man has so many problems.

And how does she kind of like let that take over her life? So I thought she did a really great job. And Peter gives, Namir, who's playing Peter, he really gives us a different role here of saying, I'm going to make you kind of feel bad for me. I'm going to kind of make you and bring you into this role and saying, yeah, my conspiracy here is real. The government was using me as a ploy in their whole system here. And I am the first person that has all of these bugs. And you and I created these bugs together. And now we're going to put them out into the world. That's a really interesting journey to kind of be taken on there because you kind of do feel bad for him in the beginning. And then towards the end, you're like, oh, wow, no, he really messed up this girl's life.

Crazy. The ending is just so crazy. It really is. And I just think all these designers and these actors and the supporting characters, too, are very strong. I think overall it's just a very, very strong piece of design, direction, and acting all over.

[20:51] Richie Grasso: Oh, totally. And the other actors, Randall Arney plays Dr. Sweet, Jennifer Engstrom plays R.C. and Steve Key plays Jerry Goss. I mean, they really have some tough jobs here. I thought both R.C. and Jerry are two very, very interesting roles to be added into this. You know, the drug use, the abusiveness coming in, how they kind of bring Agnes down to without indirectly doing it. Well, I mean, Jerry does. I mean, he's abusive and we see that on stage. But, you know, Dr. Sweet, I think, is really an interesting part to bring into this because we're at such an interesting place in the play where I'm saying, wow, I don't actually know if this doctor was real or not. But the doctor is also saying things that are reminding us as an audience.

OK, wait now. OK. OK. Yeah. You're the normal person here, right? OK. You're going to explain this to us and make sure we're not like losing our minds. Yeah. But also us having to realize, oh, how to talk to someone who's dealing with something like this. Yeah. Yeah. So it was very interesting. Very strong.

[21:52] Jeff Malone: All right. Let's take another quick break. And when we get back, we'll move into our own questions about the show and how we think that this show will measure up at this year's Tony's.

[22:02] Richie Grasso: OK, and we're back. So let's get into some of our own questions about this piece. Yeah. I mean, how did you feel being at the experience of the show with the underpouching of the phones, the jump scare kind of moments that we had, the ambiance of we didn't really talk much in the last segment about sound design, but there were some specific sound moments that were really impactful. How did you feel about your overall experience there?

[22:25] Jeff Malone: Overall, I think I actually liked that we had to turn the tech off. I think it adds to the whole narrative of this piece, like turn the tech off. Big Brother's always watching that whole conspiracy idea. So we're going to put those away and now you're going to watch a piece about like two people that think, you know, the big brother is basically watching them or wants them and is going to take them. And I think the sound design really added into that, that feeling we had slight sound design prior to the play starting. There were also moments, I don't know. I think we talked about this slightly when the audience would have like the sheep moment where like if one person stopped talking, well, like some other people would stop talking and then more people would stop talking because we thought the play was going to start.

And we were like, wait, that was really weird. Why did everyone stop talking? That was kind of cool. And again, happening in intermission, I saw waves of people start coming in and I was like, oh, well, that means that act two is about to start. I will say yonder pouching, I wish was not done just for shows involving things that unity and things that people wish, but I just wish we were doing it for more shows because it's so nice when phones are turned off, you have to tap the phone to show them it's turned off, it's locked away. We're not getting distracted with sounds and we're not just zoning out. We're in the, even for the 15-minute intermission, we're just in this world. We've committed to this space for a couple hours and we're just going to be committed to it.

So I liked that. I also think that the audience has really enjoyed this piece overall. My overall experience was just wonderful. I think Manhattan Theater Club is always putting good pieces on and I think it's a nice, it was a nice mix of an audience there, really engaged in the piece overall.

[24:00] Richie Grasso: Well, I think, you know, this is another one of those moments where you're in an audience where you're all experiencing the same thing and you're watching this and I'm saying, well, you know what? There's probably people in this audience that might think that they believe what's happening up on that stage. And then there are other people being like, wow, this is crazy. And this is like how some people really think in the world today. And I found like seeing this play and saying, okay, the journey of like when this was first written to now and how like so much has come out and especially during this Trump administration right now where so many people latch onto the things that he says and what is fact versus what is fiction, but so many people say like, oh no, what he says is accurate.

And like, it makes me and brings me back to something like this and being like, wow, it's very easy for someone to be persuaded into like really believing someone. So, you know, it's an interesting piece here and I can totally understand why Manhattan Theater Club is bringing a piece like this into this season. But, you know, and speaking on that now, as we get into some Tony talk here, where do you think this show will measure up?

[25:14] Jeff Malone: Well, I'm going to assume this would be Revival again, although it's unclear with some of these shows that have had such a long break from the last time they were seen anywhere. So Best Play or Best Play Revival, whatever it's going to be eligible for, I think it could totally be nominated for that. I think Carrie Coon has a definite chance of being nominated. Namir too. I think they both really carry the list a lot. I also think this could get a Best Director of a Play nomination for sure. Maybe even Lighting or Sound or Scenic. I mean, yeah, I think there's definitely so much potential for that.

[25:44] Richie Grasso: Right. And this is the second show of Manhattan Theater Club season now. We'll have the Ballisters coming next, because there's only one still mid to end February. So it will be very interesting to see where that kind of positions itself into the Tony season as well. David Cromer was just announced again for another play this season, which is The Fear of Thirteen. So, you know, if that doesn't get him in for direction for Bug, he does have another opportunity now to get positioned in there.

[26:18] Jeff Malone: Oh my gosh, we have to get ready to wrap up. But as you know from our last week, if you've been listening, we started the news segment in 2026, because that's the year we're in, right? Yes, 2026. We are a half hour podcast. And so we are going to do a new segment called Half Minute, which as you know, is 30 seconds. And we're going to give each other something to talk about from the production for 30 seconds and set our timers and see how we do. So this time, I'm going to set my timer and go first for you, Jeff. So I'm going to give you a topic to talk about for 30 seconds as I get my timer set. And you are going to talk to me about David Cromer's direction of Bug for 30 seconds. Go.

[26:57] Jeff Malone: Once again, I love David Cromer. I found there were so many great moments in his direction here. He really brought us into what a psychological thriller needs, giving us like not a lot in the beginning and then taking us fully on this journey of being scared, being aware. And I thought giving the direction to Keri and Namir and really kind of showing us how broken they are was a great, great moment that David brought.

[27:30] Richie Grasso: All right. I love the pressure. I love it. All right. What is my turn here? All right. So for your half minute, I think that you need to talk to me about the scenic design of Bug. Ready and go.

[27:37] Jeff Malone: Okay. When you have a set that looks so real that you could just be up there walking the space and taking an exact replication of a room like that, every detail, the minor work in the molding that had like little dirt marks on every single thing that the fire exit sign on the back of the door leaving everything is so, so, so, so specific. And mixing the lighting design into having the light shine through the blinds and the different ways that the angles of the set was the corner of the room, not just flat on his brilliant, brilliant ways of designing a set for a space. It's incredible.

[28:16] Richie Grasso: There we go. Did I hit my 30 seconds?

[28:20] Jeff Malone: You hit the 30 seconds. Okay, there we go. Again, I could talk for a lot longer about some of these things, but it's kind of a fun little rush, right?

[28:25] Richie Grasso: Yes, the half minute. Yay. Well, that does wrap up our discussion of this episode. We hope you enjoyed our deep dive into Bug. And remember, we want to hear from you. Continue the conversation with us on Instagram and TikTok at Half Hour Podcast, and drop us a comment on Spotify and let us know your thoughts on Bug. Please also leave us a review. Your reviews mean so much to us. And remember to subscribe to our channel for all past and future episodes. Until next time, I'm Jeff.

[28:47] Richie Grasso: And I'm Richie, saying ta-ta for now. Bye.