‘Bug’ a frustrating night of theater

Las Vegas Little Theatre's "Bug" is one boring little critter. And what's so frustrating is that it doesn't deserve to be.

Tracy Letts' acclaimed script is a nightmare salute to paranoia. Forty-four-year-old Agnes White (Candice McCallum) is living down-and-out in an Oklahoma motel, hiding from her mean ex-husband (T.J. Larsen). She meets the gentle but very weird Peter Evans (Brandon McClenahan), who is convinced bugs are taking over the world. (According to Letts, he may not be far off the mark.)

Things start out promisingly in director Joe Hammond's production, with McCallum and Deanne Grace (as a biker friend) slipping well into Letts' writing style of overlapping dialogue. You never feel they're trying to force an artificial style of speaking. McCallum has a natural, easygoing stage presence, and Grace is tough and touching. Larsen, in an uncharacteristic role, comes across genuinely threatening as the abusive hubby. No false swaggering here.

But the moment McClenahan enters, you know the show's in trouble. McClenahan has a tendency to, shall we say, overact. Here, he's playing a psychotic who rarely leaves the stage. Do I even have to hint how painfully repetitive his performance is? With his bulging eyes, jerking head and quavering voice, he's a one-note nonstop anxiety attack. It should have been obvious to both actor and director that they desperately needed to figure out variations in voice, manner and attitude.

The always hard-hitting approach to the dialogue gets old quick, and by the time intermission rolls by, you're exhausted. It doesn't help, either, that McCallum is way too young for her role, and is not able (understandably) to project the despair of a tired, middle-aged woman.

You'd never guess it by this production, but "Bug," in addition to being mysterious, is also at times very funny. I got the feeling Hammond is too interested in making moral points to allow any room for laughter.

The director's gifts for design, though, are used well. The motel room is appropriately sleazy, yet rich in detail and pleasing to the eye. And, without giving things away, I'll just say the change in the decor for the second act is beautifully comic and rightly overstated. Hammond's lights provide many surprising moments of poetic spectacle, particularly in the show's final seconds. His technical artistry makes you wish he had also caught the poetry in the characters.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.