Thornton Wilder has been having something of a resurgence in recent years, with acclaimed productions of his two most famous plays, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth as well as a lovely musical adaptation of the latter last fall that retained much of the late writer’s blend of grandiose philosophy, kitchen-sink drama, meta-theatricality. Now the Classic Stage Company is rolling something of a lost work, The Emporium, a nine-part drama that Thornton toiled over in fits and starts over three decades until his death in 1975. The playwright Kirk Lynn has dug up 360 pages of notes, including versions of completed scenes as well as notes on how he hoped to connect the various elements.
In a meta-prologue that Wilder himself might have appreciated, Joe Tapper explains the sketchy origins of the material as well as background on Wilder himself, whose output included not only plays but also novels and the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. He’s wandering among sturdy wooden tables piled with papers from the Yale manuscript library where Wilder’s papers are housed — tables that will double as platforms and boardinghouse beds and the counters of a celebrated department store known as The Emporium that stands as a beaconlike MacGuffin for the play’s striving young hero. (Walt Spangler’s set design and Cat Tate Starmer’s lighting effectively create multiple locations with minimal fuss.)
The show that follows throat-clearing is a mixed bag. There are moments of Wilderian genius throughout, direct appeals to the audience to boo at the Emporium’s meanie of a manager (Derek Smith) and to turn on their cellphone flashlights to create a nighttime galaxy for the show’s star-crossed lovers, John (Tapper) and Laurencia (Cassia Thompson). But there’s also a great deal that seems derivative, from Old Testament callbacks to Moses in the basket to a farewell speech by Laurencia that feels like a recycled version of Emily’s “Goodbye, Grover’s Corner” soliloquy in Our Town. It’s hard to know how much Lynn altered and revised the pages of drafts and notes and outlines and journal entries, aside from occasional non sequiturs (like three late-arriving “theatergoers” who say they got waylaid at the nearby Veselka diner). At one point Lynn tips his hand by mentioning that Wilder envisioned — but did not write — a prologue to the second act in which he identifies the show’s central metaphor. Lynn not only writes that prologue but deploys a Wilderian playfulness by having the audience vote during intermission on whether they want to see it at all.
My audience chose to see the prologue — spelling out the literal intended meaning of The Emporium, a revered establishment whose chief features seem to be its high-falutin’ reputation and a Kafkaesque gatekeeping system that relegates John and other wannabes forever on the outside. I can also see why Wilder (and Lynn) felt the desire to cough up the metaphor, which doesn’t perfectly fit the situation or the characters so that some elucidation might be necessary. That’s particularly true of Laurencia, an Emporium clerk who far from embodying an insider in the vaunted realm that John longs to join instead seems more like an underwritten ingenue who mostly humors her would-be paramour with little agency of her own.
It also becomes clear why The Emporium was never completed or produced in Wilder’s lifetime — despite two announcements of a Broadway production (including one starring Montgomery Clift). Both Wilder and Lynn seem constrained by the structure of the piece, with nine scenes and nine goodbyes, which doesn’t allow the natural development of character or plot. Instead, we get repeated invocations of Big Picture conflicts — pleasure vs. delayed gratification, exacting standards vs. crass commercialism, risk-taking vs. security — that are never dramatized in any way that truly registers. (John at one point considers abandoning Laurencia for the daughter of his non-Emporium boss, but we know he doesn’t really mean it and the flirtation ends almost immediately after it’s introduced.)
Still, you don’t need to be a Wilder completist to enjoy the many whimsical elements of the material and of director Rob Melrose’s production. Candy Buckley, who plays multiple roles with a plucky energy that proves almost infectious, is the runaway standout in a remarkably strong cast. She’s a scene stealer who draws big laughs just from her unexpected delivery of the line “Maybe.” She’s also the one who
“finds” a Molotov cocktail beneath an audience member’s chair and who urges us to create a night sky from the flashlights in our pockets. She brings a sly levity and a sense of balance to a show that teeters between the abstruse and the twee. ★★★☆☆
THE EMPORIUM
Classic Stage Company, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through June 7 for $56 to $136