Photos: Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector Have a Gilded Age Reunion at Bug Opening Night
Opening Night
Photos: Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector Have a Gilded Age Reunion at Bug Opening Night
The Tracy Letts drama opened on Broadway January 8.
Morgan Spector
Heather Gershonowitz
The stars were out for the long-awaited Broadway debut of Tracy Letts’ 1996 play Bug, which officially opened January 8 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre via Manhattan Theatre
Club.
David Cromer directs the new production, which arrives on the Main
Stem after a similarly acclaimed 2021 run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf
Theatre Company. Carrie Coon (The Gilded Age, The White Lotus) and Namir Smallwood (Elementary, Rounding, Chicago Fire) are starring as Agnes White and Peter Evans,
respectively. Both are reprising their performances from the Chicago
run, alongside co-stars Randall Arney (You Can’t Take It With You) as Dr. Sweet, Jennifer Engstrom (Sweet Bird of Youth) as R.C., and Steve Key (Sweat)
as Jerry Goss. Understudies Ian Duff, Michael Laurence, and Kristen
Sieh round out the company. Casting is by JC Clementz, with additional
casting by Caparelliotis Casting and Kelly Gillespie.
Taking in the opening-night performance were Coon’s The Gilded Age co-star Morgan Spector as well as James Taylor, Jocelyn Bioh, Brandon J. Dirden, Laura Benanti, Jose Llana, Anna Chlumsky, Steven Pasquale, Andrea Martin, Paul Sparks, Michael Shannon, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Chris Perfetti, Katie Finneran, and Darren Goldstein, among others. Go inside opening night in the photo gallery below.
The production, which began previews December 16, 2025, was
originally scheduled to conclude February 8 but will now continue
an additional two weeks through February 22. Read reviews for the
Broadway premiere by clicking here.
Coon, Letts’ offstage wife, returns to Broadway for the first time since her debut performance in the 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,
in which she starred as Honey opposite Letts, also a Steppenwolf
transfer. She has spent the bulk of her career on the screen, including
playing Bertha Russell in HBO’s Broadway star-packed The Gilded Age and the recent season of The White Lotus.
READ: The ‘Punk Rock’ Return of Carrie Coon
Set in a seedy Oklahoma motel room, Bug centers on the
unlikely romance between a lonely waitress and a mysterious and paranoid
drifter. The longer they talk, the more the waitress begins to adopt
his neuroses. The work premiered at London’s Gate Theatre in 1996, with a
revised version playing Off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre in 2004,
winning the Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Best Play. A movie
adaptation was released in 2006.
The production features scenic design by Takeshi Kata, costume design
by Sarah Laux, lighting design by Heather Gilbert, sound design by Josh
Schmidt, and hair and make-up design by J. Jared Janas. Gigi Buffington
is the production’s dialect and vocal coach, and Marcus Watson is the
intimacy coordinator and fight director. Christine D. Freeburg serves as
production stage manager.
Click here to buy tickets to Bug on Broadway.
