Will Brill plays Dr. Anthony Fauci in 1993 in Daniel Fish’s Kramer/Fauci, a work of documentary theater.
On entering St. Ann’s Warehouse for Daniel Fish’s Kramer/Fauci, the entire expanse of the building is visible. The floor is matte black, and on the far wall a bank of lights beams intensely toward the audience, replicating a high school football stadium in Texas. Although the scenic design is credited to Jim Findlay, Joshua Higgason, and Amy Rubin, and the lighting to Scott Zielinski, the importance is the actors, who re-create a 1993 C-SPAN interview with writer (the novel Faggots; the play The Normal Heart) and ACT UP activist Larry Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Dr. Anthony Fauci (Will Brill), then known as the premier AIDS researcher in the country.
Greig Sargeant plays the moderator of a C-SPAN call-in and interview show with Fauci and AIDS activist Larry Kramer. Fish’s production injects moments of absurdism with, among other things, a woman in a chicken costume.
The vast space encompasses two other characters—a moderator (Greig Sargeant), who accepts questions for the men from callers, and a woman (Jennifer Seastone), who plays all of them. Verbatim theater has been done brilliantly before—The Laramie Project, Dana H., Fatherland—and Kramer/Fauci, even though only an hour, earns a place in their company.
The emphasis is on the acting, and both men speak haltingly and with repetition, reproducing every Uh and Um. Brill, dressed in a slim-cut blue suit (by Terese Wadden) is far removed from the elder statesman who was appointed to President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force in 2020 and served under Biden after he assumed the presidency in 2021. Here Fauci is an uncomfortable, shuffling bureaucrat, ensconced as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984—a position he still held when he accepted the Biden appointment. His voice is nonjudgmental and scientific:
We don’t understand every precise thing about how the virus works, and about how the virus destroys the body’s immune system … but the link between HIV and AIDS is incontrovertible. And it’s unfortunate that people, particularly people who are HIV infected, uh, have the cruel situation of where the confusion is put into an already difficult situation for them by having people preach that in fact, the virus is not causing their illness, but they’re sick because they did something bad, like aberrant behavior.
Larry Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan) confronts one of the callers (Jennifer Seastone).
That non-moralistic assessment is one that Kramer supports wholeheartedly. But Ryan’s grumpy Kramer, renowned for his volcanic temper, also provides a helping of comic kvetching from his first moments:
Uh first, may I say I’m operating here under very primitive conditions, I can’t see you. And I can’t hear you very well in this earpiece is not, uh, is circa 1920. Uuuuuuum ... my reaction is hopeful yet wary. A-another task force is just, another task force and the way the mandate is, was worded, u-uh, we already know the answers. …
Moreover, as director, Fish has injected absurdist elements to leaven the seriousness. Seastone glides around the vastness on Rollerblades as various callers; later she dons a chicken outfit. Most notably, in the middle of the show, a large contraption is brought on and placed center stage. It begins spewing out soapsuds, and, as Kramer sits next to it, the suds just pour out until they cover fully half the gigantic space. Although the business injects startling visuals into the production, it is more: they are a sign of the absurdism surrounding the crisis—the political games, the religious battles, the prejudice, the indifference—that allowed so many people to die.
Throughout, too, in spite of occasional friction, it’s clear that Kramer and Fauci are actually friends, even as Kramer assails the obstacles to finding a cure for AIDS:
We could make a list of 8,000 things that haven’t been done that should have been done. And this is the part of you that makes me so angry when you talk like a bureaucrat, and not like the wonderful doctor I know you are. … You’ve got an institute that is a cesspool of mediocrity.
Surrounded by suds, Kramer tries to convey a sense of urgency to Fauci. Photographs by Maria Baranova.
It is also startling to hear Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy come in for as much ire as lesser-known politicians, like Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee (1981–95) and late husband of current congresswoman Debbie Dingell. Programs aren’t supplied until after the show, so one must concentrate on the words to at least cotton on to who John Dingell and other players, like Donna Shalala (former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services), are. But eavesdropping on these two giants in the midst of the AIDS crisis is absorbing theater.
Daniel Fish’s Kramer/Fauci runs through Oct. 24 at St. Ann’s Warehouse (45 Water St., Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 3 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday and at 5 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit stannswarehouse.org.
Conception & Direction: Daniel Fish
Scenic Design: Jim Findlay, Joshua Higgason & Amy Rubin
Costume Design: Terese Wadden
Lighting Design: Scott Zielinski
Sound Design: Tei Blow
If you enjoyed this review, please click on the Like icon below.
