*Kramer/Fauci,* Oct 8 2026
I saw Kramer/Fauci at St. Ann's Warehouse on Oct 8, 2026. It's a play "conceived and directed" by Daniel Fish. Here's the blurb from the St. Ann's website: "Internationally acclaimed director Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!) turns his eye to one of the most combustible conversations of the AIDS crisis: the 1993 televised clash between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading AIDS researcher, and playwright-activist Larry Kramer. A confrontation charged with rage, urgency, and unexpected intimacy, it crystallized a turning point in the fight for care, treatment, and recognition. Fish dramatizes their exchange as both history and provocation, a searing reminder of how art, activism, and public health collide on the most human terms."
I had a feeling going into the show that it would be about Kramer ranting and raving and demanding that the government pay more attention to the AIDS crisis and Fauci doing his best to work within the system. I anticipated that Kramer would have no patience for (or perhaps understanding of) Fauci having to answer to his bosses and navigate touchy political waters.
Boy was I right. The play was too clearly slanted in favor of Kramer - - Kramer came across as a ruthless, fearless warrior for justice and Fauci came across like a buttoned-up corporate dweeb. Hasn't Tony Fauci been maligned enough?
I assume the script was more or less lifted from the C-SPAN interview. They had an actor playing Kramer, another playing Fauci, another playing the moderator, and an actress playing each person who called into the show.
Thomas Jay Ryan played Kramer. I had seen him and admired his work in The Temperamentals and The Lady From Dubuque. One of these days I need to make it through his real claim to fame, playing the title character in the cult favorite Henry Fool, but that movie really annoyed me when I tried watching it.
Will Brill played Fauci. I'd seen him in Stereophonic and while he won the Tony for his performance, I don't really remember him in the show. It was the show that blew me away, not the performances. The moderator was played by Greig Sargeant and the callers were played by Jennifer Seastone.
The primacy of the Kramer character was established right off - - the moderator was sitting in a chair in the middle of the stage, Fauci was standing in the front, the caller was in the back right corner, and Kramer, for much of the start of the play, was the only person who moved around. He was walking all over that stage, often going right up to another actor in a confrontational way. This didn't seem quite fair, it seemed like an ill-considered directorial choice.
But oh my, since we’re on the topic of ill-considered directorial choices, just wait... One of the trends I've noticed in theatre in the last 15 years or so is a thing I called Make a Mess. A director thinks they'll create drama by putting a lot of crap on the stage. I saw this in a Broadway production of The Crucible, in which all kinds of paper and garbage flew in from a side window. And in The Maids at City Center, Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert littered the stage with cut flowers and sequined gowns. This isn't drama, it's just messy.
Fish did this in the extreme. About a third of the way through the show Fauci rolled a tall structure onto the stage, a black metal framework about eight feet tall with something unknown on the top shelf and something else unknown on the bottom shelf. He turned it on and it started to produce frothy bubbles, like you'd use to wash dishes. The bubbles kept coming out for what felt like five minutes or more, to the point where the mountain of bubbles was about two feet high and thirty feet wide. Kramer came onstage pretty soon after the bubbles started and sat in a chair near the machine. I don't think I was alone wondering if he was going to get buried in bubbles (he did not).
The other actors came onstage and the conversation continued, the characters oblivious to the bubbles. Fauci and Kramer each laid down on the floor at one point, that was peculiar. Here's the curtain call - - sadly the bubbles had deflated by this point but you can get a sense of the mess and the scale.
I've seen a lot of strange things onstage in my time. I saw Catherine Malfitano being hatched from an egg in a production of Parsifal. I saw a beautiful middle-aged French actress being stripped naked and covered in what appeared to be tar and feathers in a production of The Damned at the Park Avenue Armory. I saw the Lyric Opera of Chicago male chorus sitting on folding chairs dressed in Santa costumes in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. These were odd choices but somehow they supported the drama, they served a purpose. The bubbles were aggravating and absolutely useless from a dramatic perspective. I spent most of my time feeling sorry for the stage crew who has to clean up all that sh-t after every performance. I'd also like to mention that the woman playing the callers made her appearance near the end of the show in a chicken suit. Again, inane.
Should a serious work of theatre really have me thinking about The Brady Bunch?
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