REVIEWS ...
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Dark, moody for the holidays
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
Some plays make you laugh. Others move you. Still others deliberately make you uncomfortable. And a few make your skin crawl.
Tracy Letts' Bug does all those things.
As in his earlier, funnier Killer Joe, Letts has created opportunities for a stage full of big, brash acting in Bug. At GableStage, where Bug has just opened as one of the more unlikely "holiday" shows in theater history, director Joseph Adler and a fearless cast take full advantage of Letts' showy shock-a-thon. His-and-hers nudity, bathroom breaks, scorching language, crack smoking, blood, violence and bloody violence -- you want it, Bug has it.
Far darker than Killer Joe, which explored love and fury among the trailer trash set, Bug examines how one man's paranoia affects and infects those around him. It plays out in a stark, cheap Oklahoma City motel room, one that designer Rich Simone has dotted with telling indicators of its occupant's just-getting-by life: booze bottles in various stages of being emptied, a lonely can of Spam, a box of takeout fried chicken, bad motel art, a meager wardrobe hanging forlornly in the closet.
The woman who lives there, Agnes White (Kathryn Lee Johnston), is a waitress whose luck is consistently bad. Her ex, Jerry Goss (David Caprita), is a newly paroled con determined to bring himself and his violent temper back into her life. She has, understandably, never gotten over the loss of her son a decade earlier.
So she drinks, parties with her lesbian friend R.C. (Ivonne Azurdia), smokes crack, her face perpetually frozen in a mask of pained worry.
Redemption, or at least a respite from trouble, arrives in the person of Peter Evans (Todd Allen Durkin), a younger Gulf War veteran who is intense, polite. Soon they surrender physically to the desire born of a loneliness usually kept at bay. And then the real trouble begins.
Bug cascades and crescendos, building toward its deadly denouement. Bugs, in this case plant aphids (a word the cast pronounces "aaa-fid" rather than the preferred "ay-fid"), figure into the plot in increasingly horrific ways, leading to a murder and double suicide. There's nothing particularly cathartic about Bug -- it's like watching a particularly gruesome story reported on CNN -- but in a world crackling with paranoia and menace, it resonates.
The cast, which also includes Gregg Weiner in a memorable turn as a shrink who's either caring or dangerous (which one is never clear), runs with the showiness of Letts' vivid characters. But Durkin rises to another level.
Initially restrained, the actor conveys Peter's damage, his vulnerability, fear and final madness. He seems to come unraveled, first slowly, then faster, but he never lets go of Peter's twisted, unshakable beliefs. Nutty? Yes, but also empathetic. If anything about Bug really gets under your skin, it's Durkin's explosive, magnetic performance.
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Wednesday, December 8, 2004
Bug: Thriller gnaws at lives playing out at the thin, ragged edge of poverty
By Jack Zink, Theater Critic
Tracy Letts writes stage plays for people who go to the movies. His romantic thriller Bug has been diverting audiences from suburban multiplexes to downtown Chicago, London and Manhattan for years, and now finds itself being celebrated at South Florida's most fashionable address.
The scrappy little tale about life on the poverty line joins a growing list of what director Joseph Adler calls kick-butt shows at the Biltmore Hotel, in the heart of Coral Gables' most quietly regal neighborhoods. The small GableStage space near the hotel's tennis courts is rockin' and rollin' through the holidays with paranoia and obsession.
Bug takes its sweet time getting to the root of its obsession. But the author and director Adler conspire early on to drop important clues to everyone's personalities that fuel the pressure-cooker of a plot later on. Some of the tension is sexual, heightened by several scenes of full frontal male and female nudity. Another word of caution: The streetwise characters in Bug all have a rugged, coarse vocabulary.
The story revolves around a veteran of the first Gulf War who's gone AWOL from an Army hospital. Quiet and shy, his search for a crash pad leads him to a lonely, soft-hearted waitress living at the motel. Their budding romance is interrupted by what seems to be an infestation of tiny bugs that thrive on blood.
The vet Peter is played by Todd Allen Durkin in a measured performance like a slowly unwinding spring. As the rings and shadows deepen around his eyes, Durkin transforms from boy next door into an uncontrollable paranoiac.
Good though Durkin is, Peter isn't the play's best role. That's Agnes, the waitress trying to rebuild her life while fending off continued physical abuse by her ex-husband. Actress Kathryn Lee Johnston fills that role perfectly, tugging at the audience's heart strings while Agnes descends into madness with her new beau.
David Caprita is the muscular ex-husband, who's also an ex-con. Ivonne Azurdia is a tough-minded lesbian in the waitress pool who's become Agnes' confidante and protector. And Gregg Weiner is a doctor trying to coax Peter back to the hospital.
Rich Simone's scenery depicts a low-rent Oklahoma City motel that perfectly evokes the ragged ambiance of the still-running hit off-Broadway edition. John Hall's lighting broods without being too dark, but it's Michael J. Hoffmann's spooky soundscape that makes the actors' nervous tension contagious, slowly working its way through the audience. It's an itch worth scratching.
Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.
