The Bug Review!

Buckle Up: Betts' Bug sure to make audience unsettled
By Ken Keuffel
Journal Reporter

“Buckle up and brace yourself … ”

So begins the recording that callers will hear when they dial Theatre Alliance for reservations to its latest production: a play by Tracy Letts called Bug, which opened last night in Dunn Auditorium.

The advertising is true. Patrons should prepare to be unsettled at every turn, for nothing is ever quite what it seems in this tension-filled, slyly comic and occasionally gross science-fictionlike drama. One thing is certain: bugs definitely bite two characters in a seedy motel room outside Oklahoma City.

The two characters are Agnes (Kelly Wallace), a 44-year-old drug-abusing woman who is making the motel her home until her lesbian friend R.C. (Cheryl Ann Roberts) introduces her to Peter (Mark March). It doesn’t take long for Peter to move into the room and then into Agnes’ bed. When he does, the bugs appear and grow in number and ferocity, as does the flow of blood from the bites and self-inflicted surgery. The bugs might live under Peter’s skin or they might live under his tooth. Who or what is responsible? Peter or the military?

Peter might be an AWOL veteran of the Gulf War. And he might be the victim of some diabolical government experiment. He might have lost his marbles, or he might be perfectly sane.

Agnes may have “lost” her son when he was taken from her in a supermarket six years ago. And she may be hiding out from an abusive former husband, Jerry Goss (Don Gunther). And is Dr. Sweet (Ken Ashford) treating Peter for delusional paranoia or is he in cahoots with something the government would prefer you’d never know?

Strong acting, particularly by Wallace and March, contributes to a pacing that is just right in Jamie Lawson’s staging. And however improbable some of the play’s content may seem, we gain a greater appreciation of a way of living most of us haven’t seen and likely never will.

It’s difficult not to sympathize with Agnes: If you’re as lonely, desperate and scared as Agnes is, drugs and booze and maybe a man, any man, become your escape.