Bug by Tracy Letts

I'm a big fan of August: Osage County, but this play kind of let me down. I guess because I don't think it made me feel what it wanted me to feel, and I didn't like what it wanted me to feel. The whole thing about paranoia and drugs and a woman sort of being cannibalized by her love for a man felt sort of trite and boring and like, I just wasn't interested in watching it

The good thing about the play is that its particular brand of horror is completely contained and self-generated and in that way I think it's sort of the most terrifying kind of horror. The monsters are the people and their love for each other and that's really scary in like, a deep deep way. It was also hard to stomach though, and I just wanted it to be over.

Also, it was interesting that Letts introduced a few potential saviors but the saviors  were themselves so deeply flawed that they could not intervene positively in the lives of Agnes or Peter (the main characters/ romantic duo).

I guess this play was about mental illness (although for some reason it felt sort of like, a hyper-stylized/ interpretive take on that) and about the dark side of love. It's kind of about how love can take down everything in its path, and sometimes that's very bad. Like, the "bugs" are a metaphor... the characters think they're both infected with aphids, and that his aphids and her aphids are meant to breed and take down all of humanity. But really their "aphids" are the kind of baggage they both bring to the relationship, their past traumas, and when they come together their baggage breeds into something that kills them.

It was a weird play but I don't think I'll forget it.