Bug - Acting Edition [Paperback]

Tracy Letts (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. (January 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822220164
• ISBN-13: 978-0822220169
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #239,184 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than August: Osage County., November 22, 2010

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bug: A Play (Paperback)

Tracy Letts, Bug (Dramatist's Play Service, 2005)

Before even considering Bug, flip to the back page if you picked up the Dramatist's Play Service version. (The only one extant, as far as I know, but that may change.) The list of new plays they have for sale says that 2005 was indeed an amazing year for Dramatist's Play Service; sitting one above the other are Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, one of the best plays I've ever read, and John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, which of course everyone and their mother is now familiar with thanks to an Oscar-winning film adaptation in 2008. Pretty much anything else on that page is going to have a hard time standing up to those, right?

To put this in perspective, Bug was also adapted for film, back in 2006. It was made by one of Hollywood's most revered 1970s directors, William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Cruising, among others, came from Friedkin), and starring three of Hollywood's hottest properties of the nineties: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick, Jr. That's easily as much starpower as was put into the adaptation of Doubt, but Bug was released direct-to-video in America. I've been trying to find out why since I first saw the movie in 2008, and I still haven't come up with a satisfactory answer. There are countries where it was still running in theaters in 2009. That's three years on the big screen. Pretty obvious that the film adaptation of Bug was a raging success overseas. (For the record, it's a brilliant film, and it made my list of the hundred best of the last decade.)

And then there's the play. Friedkin and Letts, who also wrote the screen adaptation, were slavishly faithful; this is one of those rare cases where I can say "if you liked the movie, you'll like the book", and vice-versa, with absolute conviction. It's sheer, unadulterated genius from beginning to end. It gets inside your head and sits there. It does to us what Peter does to Agnes, and it does it just shy of perfectly. (There are a few jumps that yank us back to reality; given how effective the play is when we're immersed in it, I'm guessing this was intentional on Letts' part.) There are all kinds of crazy in this play, and the all work.

Letts has, of course, gained a great deal more fame from his follow-up, August: Osage County, which is still touring the country. And that, too, is justified, as it's a fine, fine piece of drama in its own right, a sort of one-family rural Peyton Place gone horribly awry. But August: Osage County is a big, sprawling spectacle of thing that screams "look at me!" in its best Russ Meyer enunciation. Bug is small, intimate, and feels for all the world as if you're not supposed to be watching it. When you're done with this, you should feel like a voyeur. (Whether you're guilty or turned on is, of course, up to you.) It is also horrific, in the best sense of the word. You may find yourself scratching phantom itches. This is normal. **** ½

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Menace and madness..., June 4, 2010

By 

The Stalwart Pageboy (The Kingdom of Scribbleville) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bug: A Play (Paperback)

It is a deliciously decadent experience when an author can mix fear, paranoia, confusion, hope, love, and an overall sense of impending dread into the compact space of a page, make the literary concoction come alive, and drag the reader right into midst of a passionate, terror-driven story. There are plenty of turns and twists in this particular play, so it's best not to mention them here for a new reader's sake, but I found that I was never 100% certain of what was truly going on, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing...not by a long shot, as it turns out. Are there bugs or aren't there? What is that noise that is nearly omnipresent in the background: is it the sound of an army helicopter sent to collect possible AWOL soldier Peter? Or is it, in fact, a swarm of the bugs that Peter swears are living in his body and eating him (and his waitress love-interest Agnes) alive? Can Peter be trusted? Or can anyone for that matter? The mingling of curiosity, doubt, and rekindled suspicion pack Letts' play with a powerful punch and, by the "stays-with-you" ending, even I wasn't sure if Peter and Agnes were truly in the hands of callous military scientists or if they were merely finding hope in each other and uniting in a most unusual and pitiful way (through a shared potential-delusion). Set against a background of menacing ex-husbands, violence, and ever-growing hysteria, Letts' "Bug" is an exceptionally written piece of work that can be talked about, dissected, and read multiple times, inviting different interpretations and possibilities. Highly enjoyable. - The Stalwart Pageboy

10 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars (3.5) "They try to control you... they can drive you crazy too.", July 3, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bug: A Play (Paperback)

Perhaps one must have an appreciation for the macabre, a psychotic sense of humor and vivid imagination to enjoy Lett's play of increasing paranoia, rampant drug use (crack and cocaine), loneliness and the bizarre in general. Mixed together in a play that begins as a drama in Oklahoma with eccentric characters and ends with the noise of a hovering helicopter, the CIA and a psychiatrist come to collect an errant Army "experiment" and the conclusion actually makes sense.

Agnes is a forty-four-year-old, lonely freebaser who lives in a motel, her drug-using friends stopping by for a pipe or a line before going out to party. On one particular night, an unassuming young man, Peter Evans, remains behind at the motel with Agnes, sleeping on her floor. Gradually becoming more at home, Agnes allows her temporary guest to stay, afraid to be alone and harassed by phone calls from an ex-husband recently released from prison. After only one night of shared intimacy, Peter retreats a bit, slowly seducing Agnes into a sick codependency that involves a search for the bugs that are eating him alive.

Before long, Agnes is a willing partner, Peter spinning out a fantastic yarn of government experiments run amok and his true identity. Frequently hitting the pipe, the two spiral into an advanced paranoia that has no basis in logic, a twisted world view that ends in self-mutilation, murder and an inferno. The pace of this dark drama builds with the onset of Peter's bugs, each new character implicated in a vast plot to recover the object of the Army's experiment. The ending is fitting, considering the options. In an American Psycho-Quentin Tarantino kind of fugue, Letts samples the dark side and the ramifications of obsession, but it is hardly a pleasant journey.

While powerful, this play is definitely for a niche audience, the building emotional crescendo for auteurs only. The play has been made into a film starring Ashley Judd; I can't wait to avoid it. Luan Gaines/2007.