Kramer/Fauci

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Will Brill as Dr. Anthony Fauci in a scene from Daniel Fish’s production of “Kramer/Fauci” at St. Ann’s Warehouse (Photo credit: Maria Baranova)

Thomas Jay Ryan as Larry Kramer in a scene from Daniel Fish’s production of “Kramer/Fauci” at St. Ann’s Warehouse (Photo credit: Maria Baranova)

Kramer/Fauci now at St. Ann’s Warehouse is the latest in a new genre in which stage shows recreate verbatim debates of import which include Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge (2022), Lessons in Survival; 1971 (Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin) (2022), Are You Now Or Ever Have Been: An American Documentary (2026), and The Ford/Hill Project (2026). All are rather challenging as one is expected to follow the twists and turns in these virtual or literal debates. This latest presentation recreates the November 30, 1993 C-SPAN television clash between Dr Anthony Fauci, then Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH) since 1984 and the country’s leading AIDS researcher, and Larry Kramer, playwright and AIDS activist who had co-founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1987.

The production features four fine actors: Tony Award winner Will Brill as Dr. Fauci, two-time Drama Desk Award winner Thomas Jay Ryan as Kramer, Greig Sargeant as the Moderator, and Jennifer Seastone as the 11 Callers. Avant-garde director Daniel Fish (Tony Award for Oklahoma!; Suddenly, Last Summer; White Noise; Theatre for a New Audience’s upcoming Electra) who has conceived as well as staged Kramer/Fauci has used the verbatim C-Span Video Transcript and then done his own thing with the staging.

When the audience enters the theater, they are confronted with a huge empty stage (credited to Jim Findlay, Joshua Higgason and Amy Rubin) backed by rows of bright lights (lighting design by Scott Zielinski) directed at the audience. The moderator is seated in a swivel chair about two-thirds of the way back from the apron. Seastone (mainly on roller skates) who plays all of the callers is also positioned in the back of the theater. It is she who at one point put on a chicken costume and continues to portray the callers until she takes it off and continues. Fauci and Kramer continually move as they circle the playing area with Fauci usually in the front part and Kramer often in the back.  Part of the way through the recreation, the stage is inundated with soap bubbles while Kramer now seated in the swivel chair is almost completely engulfed in them. While the reenactment of the debate might have needed some theatricalization, Fish’s devices are only a distraction from the men’s cogent arguments.

After a sound clip of Donna Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services during the Clinton Administration, the moderator asks Fauci to defend President Clinton’s record on the AIDS crisis on the day of the announcement of the formation of a new Task Force to expedite developments in drugs. This gives Kramer his first opportunity to criticize the work of the NIH 13 years into what he terms is the “AIDS plague” while Fauci continues to call it the “AIDS epidemic.” They then compare funding under the Reagan and Bush administrations as it compares to the then current Clinton administration. Kramer insists the funding is not enough when AIDS had gone from infecting 41 people when he became aware of it and now 13 years later 5,000 people are being infected daily, resulting in one billion worldwide. Fauci counters by saying that in the U.S. the numbers are 200,000 people infected. They also argue about why it takes so long for new drugs to be approved, with Fauci claiming that the drugs need to be fully tested while Kramer insists that there is no time for small-scale drug testing with the disease increasing so rapidly.

The callers range from real questions to bigots to impractical medical solutions. One person suggests that the connection between AIDS and HIV has not been proven, while another suggests that the infected be isolated in special sanitariums. Kramer brings up the case of New York Times reporter Jeffrey Schmalz who discovered he had AIDS and became a superb investigative reporter into AIDS research. He asks why there aren’t more reporters like Schmalz. The questions eventually lead to a discussion of the role of the pharmaceutical companies and why they weren’t working faster. Kramer points out that because so many of the victims are poor, the pharmaceutical companies cannot get rich finding a cure. Fauci also explains that the budget for AIDS research had gone up 21% from the year before. He also states that the money spent on cancer and heart disease is almost equal even though those diseases kill five times as many people a year but as AIDS is an out-of-control epidemic it deserves more resources. Kramer counters that now that people know how AIDS is spread, a cure is needed.

A good deal of the interplay comes from the clash between the famously combative Kramer and the cool, scientific Fauci. Kramer criticizes Fauci for saying that science has to work slowly to not get things wrong, while Fauci reminds us that the two men are friends. Kramer eventually complements Fauci on his work: “I love Tony, actually I do, I think I probably have a more complicated relationship with Tony than anybody in my entire life. He is a man, an ordinary man who was being asked to play God and he is being punished because he cannot be God.”

Ryan is very believable as the famously belligerent Kramer, insulting, exaggerating, pugnacious, losing his temper at the drop of his hat. Twice in the course of the one-hour debate, he threatens to do bodily harm to Fauci who he claims to admire – just that he isn’t working fast enough. Brill who played Ali Hakim in Fish’s revolutionary production of Oklahoma! remains cool and calm throughout the debate, never losing his composure no matter how Kramer insults him. Both Sargeant as the moderator and Seastone as all 11 callers also remain unemotional in their roles. Terese Wadden has dressed Fauci in a suit and tie and the other performers in suitably casual clothing. Sound designer Tei Blow has done an excellent job considering how far the performers are away from the audience and that they keep moving around the huge space throughout the hour.

Besides the fact that Kramer/Fauci is probably preaching to the converted, it is a little out of date: only two years later the introduction of protease inhibitors changed the way AIDS was treated. Today AIDS no longer seems to be a death sentence. The importance of this famous debate may be to show how slowly governmental medical research works although the Covid vaccine seems to have been developed in one-twelfth of the time it took to get a successful AIDS treatment. It may also be to show the politicization of the medical branch of the government. Only recently in 2026 Dr. Fauci was called by Congress to defend his work during the Covid epidemic.

Kramer/Fauci (through October 24, 2026)

OHenry Productions

St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water Street, in Dumbo, Brooklyn

For tickets, visit http://www.stannswarehouse.org

Running time: 65 minutes without an intermission