When “Bug” premièred, in 1996, the role of Peter was designed as a showcase for the handsome, cadaverous charisma of Michael Shannon, whom Letts met when Shannon was a sixteen-year-old launching himself into Chicago’s experimental-theatre scene. Shannon had played a trailer-trash fuckup in Letts’s early hit, the nihilist neo-noir “Killer Joe,” and for “Bug,” a more humane but equally dark-humored project, he channelled a different kind of intensity, a neuro-atypical, weirdo strength, all striated muscles and bug eyes. It made sense that Agnes couldn’t look away.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter