Carrie Coon to Star in Broadway Debut of Tracy Letts's Bug

Manhattan Theatre Club will produce the Broadway premiere of Tracy Letts’s early career play Bug, which will begin previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on December 17 ahead of an official opening night January 8, 2026.

The play is about a waitress and a drifter and their unexpected, paranoia-infused romance in a seedy Oklahoma motel room.

Tony nominee Carrie Coon, who is married to Letts, will star in the production opposite Namir Smallwood (Pass Over). Television audiences will know Coon for her portrayal of Bertha Russell on the HBO series The Gilded Age, as well as for her appearance on the last season of The White Lotus.

Joining Coon and Smallwood are Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom, and Steve Key, all of whom appeared in the Chicago run in 2020 and 2021.

David Cromer directs the production, which played Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre for just two weeks before it was shuttered by the Covid pandemic. The production reopened Steppenwolf’s in-person season in 2021.

Letts is the author of August: Osage County, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play. His other plays include Linda Vista and The Minutes.

Bug made its world premiere in London in 1996 and its US debut at DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2000. Its off-Broadway debut was at Barrow Street Theatre in 2004. You can read TheaterMania’s review of that production here.