The creepy psychological thriller Bug is really the story of two broken people finding each other.
But instead of this leading to healing, the characters in this season-opening Ignition Theatre play that starts on Thursday begin a spectacular downward spiral as one person’s paranoia feeds the other’s.
“Both of them are vulnerable and isolated and looking to fill a void. But when they find each other, it becomes a perfect storm,” said the play’s director Matt Grue.
The emotionally intense play by American Tracy Letts, which was turned into a 2006 movie, is described as “sort of an adult haunted house.” It’s intellectually stimulating but has gory bits, as well as some weirdly funny dialogue.
It opens with a 27-year-old Gulf War veteran, named Peter, meeting Agnes, a 40-ish waitress with an abusive ex-husband who just got out of jail.
They are in a seedy motel room to do drugs. But Peter and Agnes, played by Red Deer actors Paul Sutherland and Tilly Van Keule, are drawn together — not so much from a physical attraction as a mutual recognition that they both share an emotional emptiness.
When the two begin caring for each other, it only adds fuel to the fire, Grue added. “Peter recognizes this — not so much Agnes.” He worries that becoming romantically involved will cloud his already shaky judgment.
When Peter does start to emotionally unravel, he does so in a harrowing fashion that will leave many audience members squirming in their seats, at the very least.
Grue said some spectators have walked out of previous productions of this play.
The plot involves Peter’s increasing paranoia about the war in Iraq, UFOs, the Oklahoma City bombing, cult suicides and secret government experiments on soldiers.
His fears about bugs being planted under his skin eventually draw in Agnes.
While it would be easy to describe the thriller as being about two characters’ descent into insanity, Grue believes it’s trickier than that.
Audience members will be left questioning, at times, whether there is some truth behind Peter’s paranoia, said Grue. “Even though part of you thinks, no this can’t be true, another part thinks that what he’s saying could be plausible. Maybe there’s a grain of truth in it.”
Grue wanted to stage Bug ever since first reading the five-actor play four years ago. But The Matchbox, Ignition Theatre’s former home, which closed for financial reasons last spring, was too large a venue.
Grue believes the play’s claustrophobic, pressure-cooker plot will be accentuated by staging the drama in the small Nickle Studio, upstairs at the Memorial Centre. Ignition Theatre has redesigned the stage and added risers, which will allow for only 46 seats.
Grue hopes those will fill up quickly after the first couple of performances, as this shocker of a show has the ingredients to create a lot of word-of-mouth buzz.
He loosely compares Bug to past Ignition Theatre productions that created a stir, such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch and My Name is Rachel Corrie rather than the campy thriller Deathtrap.
The chills in Bug aren’t produced by door slams and lightning flashes, said Grue, but by the more twisted aspects of human nature — something altogether more sinister.
What: Ignition Theatre presents the psychological thriller Bug, by Tracy Letts
Where: the Nickle Studio, upstairs at the Memorial Centre
When: 7:30 p.m., Oct. 20 to 29
Tickets: $22 ($18 students/seniors) by calling 403-341-6500
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com
— copyright Red Deer Advocate