Carrie Coon on 'Bug,' conspiracy theories in the White House and her husband, Tracy Letts

CHICAGO - On Monday, Steppenwolf Theatre Company opens "Bug," a play by Tracy Letts that was first seen in London in 1996 and, subsequently, at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago, where it starred Michael Shannon and Shannon Cochran, and then at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York.

Set in a cheap motel room outside Oklahoma City - a region much dissected by Letts in the years that followed - "Bug" follows the trajectory of a persuasive young drifter and the malleable waitress who falls in love with him. The title refers to the insects that wend their way into the narrative, or, at least, into the characters' increasingly intense perceptions of their own story. "Bug" feels much like a study in paranoia, unless you think governmental actions