Daniel Fish’s world premiere Kramer/Fauci at NY Skirball explores one of the AIDS crisis’s most unlikely friendships: the bond between playwright-activist Larry Kramer and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The long-lasting friendship and deep platonic love between these two men seem inexplicable when you hear the torrent of angry curses that issued from Kramer’s mouth.
At one time, the acclaimed playwright, who also established the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, called the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases a murderer and compared him to Nazi Adolf Eichmann. But then things changed.
After Kramer’s death at 84 in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, Fauci penned a moving tribute to his sometime foe, crediting him with transforming the relationship “between activism and the scientific, regulatory and government community.”
For many who lived through the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and ‘90s, Fauci was a monster. Kramer crafted this image by relentlessly attacking the doctor in the media. So Daniel Fish’s verbatim staging at the NY Skirball of a 1993 C-SPAN segment between the sparring comrades is a fascinating way to explore this complex relationship.
Cue the foam machine and chicken suit
Will Brill portrays Fauci, with Thomas Jay Ryan as playwright-activist Kramer. Fish, known for his controversial interpretation of Oklahoma!, takes the conversation one step further by juxtaposing the serious with the absurd.
The word “surreal” gets overused these days. Still, here Fish and the creative team embody it, transfixing the audience with a 54-instrument light grid beamed directly into theatergoers’ faces (ocassionally annoying and headache-inducing), coupled with an array of unusual prop choices.
Deploying a foam machine for nearly 10 minutes as suds fill the stage and envelop Ryan in a chair is a phenomenal way to make a metaphor literal, as if we’re witnessing a slow nightmare. A chameleon-like Jennifer Seastone embodies the various callers for the TV program, first entering on rollerblades and later donning a pneumatic chicken suit that recalls some of ACT-UP’s more dramatic condom activations.
Kramer/Fauci is theater as agitprop, a reminder that words and actions have impact.
4 out of 5 stars
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Fast facts: ‘Kramer/Fauci’
Daniel Fish transforms a C-SPAN segment into surreal agitprop that proves fury and friendship aren’t mutually exclusive.
- NYU Skirball, 566 LaGuardia Place, New York City
- Notable performers: Will Brill, Thomas Jay Ryan
- Running time: One hour, no intermission
- Performances through February 21, 2026
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