Something interesting is happening with the slash in the middle of the title of Daniel Fish’s extraordinary “Kramer/Fauci.” It’s a busy little punctuation mark. For one thing, it suggests that Fish, a Tony-nominated director best known for his experimental staging of “Oklahoma!,” is basing his work in fact. Often used as a no-fuss archival notation or in a poster for a heavyweight bout, a “/” can gesture both to truth and to opposition. (You might think of Peter Morgan’s 2006 historical drama, “Frost/Nixon,” or the more recent docudrama “The Ford/Hill Project.”) On Nov. 30, 1993, C-SPAN hosted a call-in program, including Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Larry Kramer, the hot-tempered playwright and activist, sparring over a new government task force on H.I.V. and AIDS.
In Fish’s production, the dialogue spoken by Fauci (Will Brill), Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan), the various callers (Jennifer Seastone) and the interviewer Steve Scully (Greig Sargeant) is verbatim, replicating that same C-SPAN recording, which they hear through in-ear speakers. Experiencing Fish’s discombobulating, sometimes absurd production is utterly unlike watching the original television interview, however. We don’t see Fauci sitting in a Washington, D.C., studio, nor Kramer appearing via video screen — instead, the actors roam the St.
Ann’s Warehouse vastness, aimless as animals in a field. Lights shine in our eyes. Seastone, deadpan, gives all the callers a dreamy quality, sometimes gliding around on roller skates or climbing inside an immense inflatable chicken suit.
The performers don’t imitate their counterparts so much as channel them. Kramer’s fire seems banked in the cool-eyed Ryan … until he yells. And Brill sports the un-Fauci-esque mustache of a 1970s bank robber, but he captures the tidy scientist’s essence anyway — unflappable patience, Brooklyn accent and all. (“I love ya, Larry!”) The production’s four-member cast is made up of actors of deep soulfulness: from left, Ryan, Jennifer Seastone, Brill and Greig Sargeant.Credit...Maria Baranova About halfway through, seemingly at random, Ryan drags a foam machine onto the stage.
It whirs into action, filling the room’s center with piles and piles of soapy bubbles. We almost lose sight of Kramer, as he sits amid this glittering cumulus. Ryan, a performer of wit and gravitas, wanders through the foam-field, cutting pathways into it; then he squeegees up the mess.
The conversation is, on its surface, combative. Kramer attacks the Clinton administration for a lack of urgency in drug research; he’s furious about Fauci’s insistence that the government is moving as quickly as it can. But the two men — clearly old friends — are also in profound accord.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
