In the successful first act, Peter is written very interestingly as well as performed spot-on by Lilly. Peter says that he makes people uncomfortable because he picks up on things, such as that Agnes is lonely, as if that were an insightful perception. The insight here is into the mind of paranoids, as he holds onto self-respect by ration-alizing his hypersensi-tivity into a virtue. Davis strikes the right notes of wariness and vulnerability, which eases Agnes’s succumbing to Peter’s influence. Raidge makes a great ex-con, not just because of his size but because of his ability, as he has demonstrated so often at Providence Black Rep, to counterbalance his character’s anger with cool intelligence.
You should know that Bug gets a little gruesome by the end, thanks to Michael Dates’s makeup effects of gross-looking wounds.
If you’re going to see this play, you might want to stop reading here. Knowing about the final character, who comes in at the last scene, might give away more than you want to know: Bob Jaffe plays Dr. Sweet, who has been treating Peter for what he insists are the delusions of a paranoid with schizophrenic tendencies.
Bug is a literal horror story as well as a metaphorical one about a government prone to bug us with policies and practices that get under our skin. Less of that one-note reminder would have gone a long way.
Related:
Identity crisis, The case of Milan Kohout, Et tu Brute?, More 
- Identity crisis
“My eyes,” she says. “I want them blue. I want them blue so my mama love me and I have friends and people don’t do ugly things in front of me and I stop being invisible.”
- The case of Milan Kohout
Kohout, a serious man, was engaged in the serious business of political protest.
- Et tu Brute?
"The whole theatrical event is sort of . . . a much more mysterious one."
- Social settings
Seán Curran’s dance looks like a formal exposition of movement, but after a while you begin to imagine webs of social interactions, relationships, and hidden histories.
- Punch lines
A tide of laughter breaks over comedian Eddie Brill as his high-speed spiel about an antic bar pick-up recounted in a string of clichés halts.
- Life is but a dream
Children from theatrical families are often said to have been born in a trunk.
- Disco lives!
Hard to get to but wonderful to visit, Jamaica Plain is one of the secret jewels in the Boston crown. DJ Joseph Colbourne, "Color Mix" (mp3)
- City limits
There’s nothing like the first weekend of beautiful weather to raise skepticism about digitally mediated experience.
- Mooninite scapegoats?
A year from now, what will we think of the Mooninite fiasco?
- Tracks of her tears
There are tears but no onions in The Onion Cellar. But who needs emotionally catalytic root vegetables when you have the Dresden Dolls?
- A house divided
As he began his opening set at Rise two Fridays back, Craig Mitchell said to me, “This is gonna be a great night!”
- Less
Topics:
Theater
, Entertainment, Pulitzer Prize Committee, Performing Arts, More
, Entertainment, Pulitzer Prize Committee, Performing Arts, Theater, Theatrical Plays, Ashley Judd, Tracy Letts, William Friedkin, Bob Jaffe, Megan Sandberg-Zakian, Less
