When we last saw Bertha Russell, she was aghast that her husband left her.
That was on “The Gilded Age.”
Now Mrs. Russell’s portrayer, Carrie Coon, is coming to Broadway this fall. She’ll star in her award winning playwright husband’s “Bug.”
The husband, Tracy Letts, actor and writer, is best known for “August Osage County.”
By the time she gets to the Samuel G. Freedman Theater, Coon may have an Emmy for “The White Lotus.”
That’s quite a year!
“Bug” last played at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater in 2021.
The full cast of the 2021 production will reprise their performances on Broadway, including Namir Smallwood, Randall Arney, Jennifer Engstrom and Steve Key.
Set in a seedy Oklahoma motel room, Bug centers on the unlikely romance between a lonely waitress and a mysterious and paranoid drifter. The longer they talk, the more the waitress begins to adopt his neuroses. The work premiered at London’s Gate Theatre in 1996, with a revised version playing Off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre in 2004, winning the Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Best Play. A movie adaptation was released in 2006 directed by William Friedkin, starring Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick, Jr.
This production will be notable for its acting and writing, and also its opening night. Almost all of “The Gilded Age” cast lives in New York. The Freedman theater is small, so you can imagine that red carpet!
