30 Years Later, Is Bug Still Catching?

Letts’s play is a sordid, spiky creature, a two-hour descent into a pit of paranoia within the dingy walls of an Oklahoma motel room. It’s also an acting showcase, especially for its female lead, and Coon tears into the tragic arc of troubled club waitress Agnes White with her characteristic naked courage. But to really do its work, Bug needs to get under our skin, and here it never quite does. We’ve got to feel not only the ick but the itch — the ­gnawing sensation that, for all their ­delusions, the protagonists might not actually be nuts. Even if they are, their nightmarish conviction should stick with us. We should walk away struggling to shake the feeling something’s crawling up our backs.