Anthony Fauci, hero or villain, has become a pressing question for some inexplicable reason nowadays. The correct answer is offered in Kramer/Fauci, an hour-long excursion that conceiver-director Daniel Fish has fabricated from the November 30, 1993 C-SPAN conversation during which the title characters participated volubly, with journalist Steve Skully moderating.
To begin with, there’s definitely no reason to think that the always extraordinarily theatrical Fish has merely seated either of the focal character behind a table to indulge their intense chitchat.
Heavens no, he has something else in mind. He makes full use of a gymnasium-sized space for which the only furnishing is a back wall featuring 80 bright lights that lighting designer Scott Zielinski occasionally dims or turns off completely.
The only furnishing he introduces is a tall, fabric-hung, statue-like device that wheels on just past the room’s midway and quickly begins spewing foamy bubbles that in the course of a few suspenseful minutes forms a fan-shaped foamy bubble-filled lake.
What is this weird thing? Though it’s never named, one interpretation is that the bubbles stand for individual AIDS deaths. Indeed, why not take them for that, since Kramer/Fauci is the on-air confrontation the two men had that day about the then 11-year-old epidemic and its horrific toll. So far.
Immediately, it’s made clear that Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Fauci (Will Brill) are not on opposite sides of the issue. They’re not at uncompromising positions, although they hold varying opinions about how the political and otherwise challenges are being met. For one contested difference, it’s Fauci who consistently says “epidemic” while Kramer insistently challenges him, blaring “plague.”
That repeated outburst is perhaps the simplest illustration of the argument made during a world-wide crisis that was upper-most a generation or two ago but by now may have paled. More recently, it seems, COVID has thrown its shadow across the metaphorical landscape.
Yes, the arguments vociferously launched here will possibly gnaw more at audiences who lived through the first AIDS decades than the generations that have followed. (Has anyone read an AIDS obituary recently? For a long time, they looked to be daily occurrences.)
It was a time when seemingly the most outspoken and national champion for AIDS care—for discovery of the quickest cure—was Larry Kramer. Through those years Anthony Fauci’s response was that everything was being done to produce the longed-for drugs. Not acceptable to Kramer, whose unrelenting response was that not nearly enough was being done.
He consistently fulminates: “We already know, the answers, we already know what’s holding all the things that are, the the stumbling blocks that are keeping us from from developing new drugs. And this is a task force to identify what the stumbling blocks are, we know what they are: a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape, a lot of stupid laws by Congress, and a lot of idiots, uhhhhhhhs, putting their two cents worth, uhuhhh, how are you gonna get rid of all of these things is what I want to know and I have yet to hear a task force form to tell me that.”
Fauci is, predictably much more moderate, but part of the beauty of Kramer/Fauci is that at moments they may oppose each other, may be at odds, but they’re not enemies. They’re highly respectful friends, and more than once after Kramer says so, Fauci comes back with “I love you, Larry.” That’s the overall spirit here.
To remove the somewhat amiable Kramer-Fauci from something at all static, this is how Fish recreates the C-SPAN meeting. When the lights go up, Kramer is off center at the back wall and Fauci is downstage. The moderator (Greig Sergeant) is seated center stage. A bit farther upstage is Jennifer Seastone representing Callers.
There are plenty (some women, some men) plying Kramer and Fauci with pertinent affirming and critical questions. To ask one of the questions, Seastone puts on a large yellow, animal-like costume (Terese Wadden, the costumer).
The actors do move throughout the hour, sometimes even occasionally leaving their stage. Late in the action, Ryan even grabs a broom in order to sweep up as much as he can of the still-bubbling foam.
By the end—remember this is a transcript—no memorable resolutions are reached. On the other hand, a neatly resonant encounter has compellingly taken place.
Note: There is at least one reference to blood cells, but Fish, who recently turned out the bloody Oklahoma! revival, doesn’t include more of the same here.
Second note: Larry Kramer, successful novelist, et cetera, may be remembered these days as a loudmouth. Good for him. A case could be made that his loud mouth might have been received as very useful these inflammatory days.
Kramer/Fauci opened October 4, 2026, at St. Ann’s Warehouse and runs through October 24. Tickets and information: stannswarehouse.org
