The reviews are in for Kramer/Fauci, Daniel Fish’s staging of the 1993 C-SPAN call-in show in which the AIDS activist Larry Kramer and Dr. Anthony Fauci argued over the government’s response to the epidemic, which opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse on October 4. Every word comes from the broadcast transcript, but Fish sets it loose in the warehouse’s empty expanse, with roller skates, an inflatable chicken suit and a machine that buries the stage in foam. Most of the critics are gripped: The New York Times calls it extraordinary, TheaterMania calls it gripping, and Thomas Jay Ryan’s Kramer and Will Brill’s Fauci are praised almost everywhere. The doubters are Theater Pizzazz, which finds the hour talky and the staging a distraction, and New York Theater, which wants more context than the transcript gives.
The verdict: eight reviews so far, and only two carry a score: New York Stage Review and Culture Sauce both give the show 4 out of 5, an average of 4.0 among the outlets that rate. The rest, The New York Times and Vulture among them, publish no score. Nearly everyone admires the performances of Thomas Jay Ryan and Will Brill and the great tide of foam at the center of the evening; what splits them is the rest of Fish’s staging, which most find illuminating and Theater Pizzazz finds a distraction from a long, talky debate.
What are critics saying about Kramer/Fauci?
The New York Times
"A Thrilling Episode From the AIDS Battlefield"
Reviewer: Helen Shaw
Helen Shaw calls the production extraordinary and spends much of her review on how Fish turns a static television studio into something stranger, with the actors roaming the warehouse and lights shining straight into the audience’s eyes.
"Kramer’s fire seems banked in the cool-eyed Ryan … until he yells."
She praises both leads for channeling rather than impersonating the two men, and singles out Brill for catching Fauci’s patience and Brooklyn accent.
Vulture
"Walks Out of the Archives and Into Our Heads"
Reviewer: Sara Holdren
Sara Holdren argues that a live performance of an old transcript can do what the written record has failed to do, and reopen our eyes to a history we have chosen to forget.
"a play … that’s spare, anti-emotional, and deeply stirring."
She is full of praise for Ryan’s steely Kramer and Brill’s precise Fauci, hears the pair’s exchanges as a wry, platonic romance, and finds the evening’s echoes of the Covid years chilling.
TheaterMania
"Daniel Fish Turns an AIDS-Era Clash Into Gripping Theater"
Reviewer: Dan Rubins
Dan Rubins finds that Fish’s abstract images sharpen rather than smother the argument, and reads the foam sequence as the plague itself, rising around a Kramer who cannot stop it.
"There are no cowards here: Kramer/Fauci is high-risk theater-making that pays off"
His one reservation is Fauci, whose inner conflict he feels the staging never shows, so that the scientist sometimes comes across as the villain of the piece.
New York Stage Review
"Highly resourceful conceiver-director Daniel Fish gets theatrical again"
Reviewer: David Finkle · 4 out of 5
David Finkle stresses that these two men were friends who disagreed rather than enemies, and that the warmth between them is what gives the hour its shape.
"On the other hand, a neatly resonant encounter has compellingly taken place."
He admits the transcript reaches no great resolution, and wonders whether the argument will land harder with audiences who lived through the first decades of AIDS.
Culture Sauce
"Revisits an epic standoff over a fatal epidemic"
Reviewer: Thom Geier · 4 out of 5
Thom Geier calls the drama absorbing, with Ryan prowling the stage and Brill answering him with measured calm, and he enjoys the absurdist humor Fish finds in the material.
"a time when civilized discourse still flourished even among individuals publicly at odds with each other"
The foam, for him, is a striking picture but an oblique metaphor, and he notes the irony that the urgency Kramer demanded arrived decades later with the Covid response.
New York Theatre Guide
"A 1993 public health debate still resonates today"
Reviewer: Christian Lewis
Christian Lewis credits Fish with keeping the two sides balanced, so that neither man emerges as a simple hero or villain and the audience is left to judge for itself.
"Some of Fish’s other experimental choices … feel gimmicky, but the bubble cloud is a heart-wrenching coup de theatre."
He finds the debate alarmingly topical after the pandemic and calls the production well worth seeing.
Read Christian Lewis’s full review at New York Theatre Guide
New York Theater
Reviewer: Jonathan Mandell
Jonathan Mandell values the production as a historical corrective, reminding audiences that by 1993 Kramer and Fauci called each other friends.
"…featured some distracting avant-garde touches, nevertheless provides a useful historical perspective with this production"
He points out that much of the conversation was overtaken within a couple of years by new treatments, and wishes the program had carried a note bringing the facts up to date.
Theater Pizzazz
"Kramer/Fauci Talks and Talks Without Enough Illumination"
Reviewer: Stuart Miller
Stuart Miller is the sternest critic here: he finds the two men reduced to talking points, repeating themselves through a broadcast that was never built to be drama.
"this production fails to fully hold your attention, even for an hour"
He has no complaint about the cast, but finds the roller skates, the chicken suit and the foam distracting, and regrets that the play offers the conversation without the context to judge it.
For more of what the New York critics have been saying, read our roundups for Garry Starr: Classic Penguins at Studio Seaview and Delirium at the Space at Irondale.
Kramer/Fauci runs at St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water Street, Brooklyn, through October 24, 2026. The running time is one hour, with no intermission. Production photos by Maria Baranova.
