Bug, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s much-anticipated Broadway production of the Tracy Letts play starring wife and The White Lotus actor Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood, has canceled tonight’s performance – the final preview before tomorrow’s still-scheduled opening – due to an illness in the company.
A rep for the company confirmed tonight’s cancellation as well as the cancelled second act of a matinee this afternoon. No word on who was taken ill.
The audience at today’s matinee at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre was informed at intermission that the performance would not resume due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Refunds are expected.
The show has been doing brisk business, with the most recent box office figures (for the Broadway week ending January 4) reporting attendance at 96% of the venue’s capacity. The gross for the week’s eight preview performances was $446,806. David Cromer (Prayer For The French Republic, The Band’s Visit) directs.
As of this evening, tomorrow’s starry opening night is officially still on. Expected to attend the 6 p.m event are Coon’s White Lotus co-stars F. Murray Abraham, Jon Gries and Sam Nivola as well as Ben Ahlers, Lauren Ambrose, Ngozi Anyanwu, Iris Apatow, Dylan Baker, Christine Baranski, Anna Baryshnikov, John Lee Beatty, Teddy Bergman, Jocelyn Bioh, Joshua Boone, Will Brill, Marc Bruni, Juliana Canfield, Michael Chernus, Anna Chlumsky, Margaret Colin, Roberta Collindrez, Michael Creighton, Kelley Curran, Hope Davis, Johanna Day, Brandon Dirden, Maria Dizzia, Jamie Ellington, Edie Falco, James FitzSimmons, Darren Goldstein, Sam Handel, Jessica Hecht, Carl Hopkins, Reuben Santiago Hudson, Toby Kebbell, Sydney Lemmon, Adriane Lenox, Santo Loquasto, Keenan MacWilliam, Andrea Martin, Lakisha May, Arian Moyed, Gregg Mozgala, Annie Parisse, Steven Pasquale, Nancy Piccione, Alison Pill, Phylicia Rashad, Meghan Roche, Jeremy Shamos, Michael Shannon (who starred in both the 1996 original Bug production and William Friedkin’s 2006 film adaptation), Krissy Shields, Cory Michael Smith, Paul Sparks, Morgan Spector, Daniel Sullivan, Rebecca Taichman, James Taylor, Sanaz Toosi, Merritt Wever and David Yazbek.
In addition to Tony and three-time Emmy nominee Coon and Smallwood (Broadway’s Pass Over, TV’s American Rust) the Bug cast includes Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom and Steve Key.
The play by Letts (a Tony and Pulitzer winner for August: Osage County) and produced in association with Chicago’s Steppenwolf theater company, follows what the synopsis calls “an unexpected and intense romance between a lonely waitress (Coon) and a mysterious drifter (Smallwood). What begins as a simple connection between two broken people in a seedy Oklahoma motel room twists into something far more dangerous. When reality slips out of grasp, paranoia, delusion, and conspiracy take over in this sexy psychological thriller.”
This production of Bug arrives following Steppenwolf’s critically-acclaimed 2021 run and marks the play’s Broadway premiere. Bug premiered in London in 1996 and Off Broadway in 2004.