At one point does a killer virus warrant an emergency response? That question, timely in the shadow of the COVID pandemic, hovers over Daniel Fish’s absorbing new drama Kramer/Fauci, which re-creates a 1993 C-SPAN interview with playwright-turned AIDS activist Larry Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan) and epidemiologist Anthony Fauci (Will Brill), then the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The even-keeled Steve Scully (Greig Sargeant) moderated the exchange between the long-time frenemies, who shared a passion for tackling the AIDS crisis but disagreed on the methods and speed at which the government was responding to a disease then its 13th deadly year.
The nominal subject of the program was a taskforce that newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton had announced — which Kramer furiously dismisses as another attempt to delay real action on research or releasing promising experimental drugs to patients desperate for any type of treatment. Ryan’s Kramer, dressed in a monkline turtleneck (costumes by Terese Wadeen), stalks the stage like a wild cat ready to pounce, or roar, at the least provocation though there’s something calculated even in his expletive-laced outbursts, like a theater veteran fully aware of his performance. Brill’s Fauci, meanwhile, deflects Kramer’s outrage with deliberate and measured calm, his voice oozing the gentle intonations of the doctor’s Brooklyn upbringing.
Kramer, who had once called Fauci a “murderer,” had by 1993 clearly reached a kind of detente with the veteran government bureaucrat, recognizing a person who truly shared his commitment and had backed it up with genuine increases in research funding. “Every time Tony wants to go to the toilet, 10 committees have to vote about giving him permission,” Kramer comments at one point, clearly blaming the bureaucracy surrounding Fauci rather than the man himself.
Both men seem to recognize the roles they have to play in drawing the public’s attention to the crisis, a pas de deux between the outraged activist pushing for more, better, quicker and the scientist committed to change in a more measured, diplomatic way. A heated exchange over the number of AIDS cases proves telling. “Take the highest [figure] you can get your hands on and run with it,” Kramer argues, prompting Fauci to respond: “I don’t want to lose the credibility, Larry, when I say what I-I know is true.” (It turns out that Fauci’s figures were much more accurate.)
As portrayed here, Fauci seems to appreciate how activists like Kramer can advocate for attention and change in ways that a man like him cannot working solely within the system. Even after a direct scolding, more than once he responds, “I love you, Larry.” The symbiotic nature of their relationship becomes clear as the two field a series of questions from callers, each voiced by Jennifer Seastone with a variety of accents. There are AIDS patients and family member who’ve lost loved ones, as well as bigots and people dismissive of the billions of dollars spent on research compared to cancer and heart disease.
Fish presents all of this material with a directorial flourish that yields moments of surprising humor, a blend of documentary or verbatim theater with elements of theater of the absurd. Ryan’s Kramer begins far upstage in the vast empty space of St. Ann’s Warehouse, apologizing for the “very primitive conditions” of his hookup. (“I can’t see you,” he says. “And I can’t hear you very well in this earpiece is not, uh, is circa 1920.”) Seastone spends half the show wheeling about on rollerblades, and later dons an inflatable chicken costume for reasons that are never fully articulated. Jim Findlay, Joshua Higgason, and Amy Rubin share credit for the spare set design, while lighting designer Scott Zielinski’s punctuates scenes by toggling between overhead lights and glaring backlighting from 80 high-wattage lights positioned all along the theater’s back wall.
Then there’s the foam, great volumes of which fill the stage midway through the show. The characters move through the bubbly drifts, Brill’s Fauci occasionally sprawling down in it to dampen his off-the-rack business suit while Kramer squeegees up the slowly dissipating detritus. It’s a striking image, but a decidedly oblique metaphor for confronting a widening public health crisis.
For modern audiences, it’s clear how the argument in this televised debate may have shaped Fauci and his response to COVID-19 decades later. In Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. government quickly assembled a Manhattan Project-like effort to fast-track vaccines and therapeutic treatments — exactly the sort of urgent and outsize approach that Kramer had so desperately sought during the AIDS crisis. The irony is that the government’s COVID response brought Fauci a new set of critics, just as vitriolic as Kramer and even more oblivious to the constraints (and promise) of the scientific method.
For all its verbal combativeness, Kramer/Fauci reminds us of a time when civilized discourse still flourished even among individuals publicly at odds with each other. ★★★★☆
KRAMER/FAUCI
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn
Running time: 65 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through October 24 for $59 to $89