Nicholas Eddie and L.A. Sweeney in Bug | Photo by Nate Colitto
“Seems like all we ever talk about is bugs. I guess I’d rather talk about bugs with you than talk about nothin’ with nobody.”
This profession from an isolated woman to her disturbed new lover is, for me, the thematic keystone of the play. I understand the compulsion to embrace the delusion of someone you love rather than lose them. Is that healthy? Arguably no. But as a human truth, it resonates. To hold onto someone and declare: I am with you in this, the world be damned—though misguided, there is power in that.
After two decades, this play’s hold over me remains firm; I feel it in my body. Having caught a disappointing production in Toronto just over ten years ago, William Friedkin’s film adaptation (a late career masterpiece) was my favourite rendering. Until now! The King Black Box production of Tracy Letts’ Bug, presented in partnership with Elkabong Theatre Projects, truly astonished me.
Perhaps you don’t know Bug, so here’s the gist: a lonesome woman with a tragic backstory is seduced by the delusions of a paranoid drifter. Holed up in her motel room, they create a world of their own in defiance of a society they no longer trust. Fixating their fraught psyches on an imagined infestation of bugs, they invent a mythology for where they came from and what they want. Concerned people on the periphery recognize how toxic this is, but their interventions fail. From there, we’re thrust along a dark, hilarious and heartbreaking trajectory.
Letts’ dialogue is so dense with character yet feels light and breezy. Never overplaying his hand, he’s woven in some deft satire about the traumatic effects of war, the abundance of easily accessible misinformation and the maintenance of a culture of fear.
Agnes White (L.A. Sweeney) has a tough exterior, seems brash and self-sufficient, though she depends on drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of a lost child and the fear her dangerous ex-husband, Jerry Goss (Bongani Musa), will return. Cloistered in her motel room, a precarious home, she clings to her best friend, a fellow waitress at a local bar, R.C. (Alexandra Floras-Matic). Floras-Matic is a wild, buoyant presence and we immediately understand the distraction she provides for Sweeney’s initially guarded Agnes. She also has one of the most heart-wrenching yet understated exits I’ve ever seen on stage.
When Peter Evans (Nicholas Eddie) first intrudes upon Agnes’s isolated existence, she’s charmed by his awkward, gentle weirdness—as are we. Eddie is tremendously tall in relation to the rest of the cast and the venue’s low-ceiling, though the actual threat he poses isn’t obvious until much later. He is attentive, excessively so, and Agnes is fascinated by his hypnotic ideas about the encroaching menace of modern technology, information and the powers that be. Eddie and Sweeney are fully captivating as they inhabit this offbeat relationship and track its descent into a darkly comic, disturbing folie à deux—a raw, fierce, aching portrait.
And holy shit, the sequence where he coaches her through the real-time creation of her own conspiracy theory is an unhinged, demented spectacle.
Musa is uncomfortably charismatic as the abusive Goss. He projects an aura of entitlement, seems accustomed to being the most intimidating presence in the room, so it’s thrilling to witness how Eddie’s Peter throws him off balance. His contempt for and bafflement with the situation is funny, but he’s certainly not likeable. We can tell, though, that he genuinely cares about Agnes, recognize in his bullying a desire to protect her from Peter’s deranged manipulation, though he never recognizes it as an echo of his own possessiveness.
While this isn’t in the writing, I caught a whiff of subtext from the casting here, an organic and nuanced tension rooted in the circumstance that both Agnes and Goss here are Black. Not especially significant in and of itself, and perhaps my own projection, but Eddie’s notably pasty nerd vibes here seemed to hint at an unspoken cultural tension—as if Agnes has broken from Goss in way that startles him, shatters some implicit understanding. So, I imagine him thinking, you’re shacking up with gangly white weirdos now, huh, Agie?
No fight director is credited, so I guess director Andrew Cameron and the cast have sorted out for themselves the impressively convincing violence and gore. Especially in such close proximity to the audience, mere feet away, it is incredibly exciting to feel genuine fear for these people. Cameron—who also designed the eerie and poignant soundscape—has absolutely nailed the pacing of this descent into viscerally devastating madness. This has breath and a beating heart that never abate. Cameron also has great confidence in our ability to navigate prolonged periods of quiet and darkness amidst the mayhem.
Sophie Ann Rooney’s production design is persuasive, an essential frame for the charged air. Her motel room set feels authentic and lived in, full of details that ground us in Agnes’s life. The cozy black box venue allows for intense and intimate immersion, invites us to sit with and scrutinize, like trapped bugs, the minutiae of objects and human behaviour.
It is symbolically telling that the window Agnes and Peter anxiously peer out of is actually a mirror—the outside world to them just a reflection of their own warped headspace. The rustic motif of natural wood is warm and cozy—an ambiance profoundly disrupted by the unsettling appearance of crinkly metal foil as Agnes and Peter barricade themselves in the throws of a paranoid frenzy.
Into this baleful atmosphere, creeps Sean Jacklin’s mild mannered and jovial Dr. Sweet. Jacklin’s voice is soothing, with a sneaky hint of amusement, and his concern for both Agnes and Peter seems genuine, though we recognize the cruel tactics in his arsenal. And we certainly fear for him in this zone where all bets are off. Our anxiety is heightened by an increasingly expressive lighting design by Cameron, Rooney and Grisha Pasternak, which takes us from the naturalistic coziness of practical lamps to a cold, neon blue nightmare.
Alright, I need to get the hell out before I completely kill the mystique of this visceral, thrilling production. If you’re game, I want you to experience the damn thing for yourself.
Bug
November 28 to December 14, 2025
The King Black Box
(1224 King Street West, 3rd floor)
2 hours (no intermission)
Nicholas Eddie in Bug | Photo by Nate Colitto