Anybody who knows and loves Thornton Wilder’s great plays and fine novels – count me among them – will be fascinated by Classic Stage Company’s able production of a tantalizing drama he rewrote for years yet never managed to complete. Billed (presumably for copyright reasons) as Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium, the text is melded from drafts of Wilder’s unfinished play by writer Kirk Lynn, whose adaptation premiered at the Alley Theatre in 2024.
Theatergoers previously bored or confused by The Skin of Our Teeth and The Long Christmas Dinner need not read further, because the typically quirky Wilder drama that CSC opened on Monday obviously is not their dish. Nor can it be recommended for newbies to his whimsically profound works. Wilder devotees, however, as well as fans of that fine character actor Candy Buckley, who vibrantly depicts half a dozen women here, are likely to enjoy a good time.
Wilder’s idiosyncratic, meta-theatrical style of playwriting is evident in Lynn’s agreeable opening scene. How The Emporium originated is explained by the actor who soon portrays John, the nice, ambitious, white everyman whose passage through mid-twentieth century American life – many Wilder stories involve journeys – forms the arc of the dark-ish comedy. This introduction establishes Wilder’s eminence and Lynn’s discovery in an archive at Yale of some 360 handwritten pages of various manuscripts for The Emporium, a play Wilder began in 1948 and intermittently labored upon during half of the 1950s.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
His Horatio Alger-type tale centers on John, a foundling discovered in a grand department store called The Emporium. John grows up in an orphanage and then on a farm, intent on getting to the big city and someday belonging to that magical establishment. Frustrated in his efforts, John settles for something else and tries to induce others to join him rather than toil for the economically uncertain Emporium.
By its second act, the nascent story proves fragmentary, loses direction and sputters out but not before its central metaphor is revealed. Viewers vote at intermission if they want to see Lynn’s realization of an unwritten scene noted in Wilder’s original outline that explains it. Beware this spoiler: The Emporium is about pursuing life in the arts. Maybe. Although the theme is not satisfyingly developed, at least the patchy drama’s conclusion offers Wilder’s typically affirmative look towards the future, noting millions of cycles spinning in the cosmos, suggesting countless chances for a do-over. Little wonder Wilder kept working on this play and why Lynn was inspired to give it a try.
Artistic director of the Alley Theatre, Rob Melrose, who staged the play’s premiere, provides a handsome, well-acted production upon CSC’s open thrust stage, where long oaken tables and chairs are rearranged by the actors and crew to indicate locations. Scenic designer Walt Spangler spreads across the back wall an imposing sculptural signboard that spells out The Emporium in sometimes glowing letters. Cat Tate Starmer’s lighting design dramatically indicates changes in place and mood throughout Melrose’s smooth pacing of a bumpy drama.
Dressed colorfully in late 1940s clothes by costume designer Alejo Vietti, the ensemble brightly animates the characters. Joe Tapper presents an earnest John who can’t achieve his dreams or win the nice girl forthrightly played by Cassia Thompson. Derek Smith capably depicts five individuals ranging from an ugly-tempered farmer to a doddering millionaire. Flamboyantly, but delightfully, Candy Buckley deploys sharp accents and attitudes to give stage life to half a dozen people, including a comical not-so-hot heiress in a ghastly green frock and a frowsy Eye-talian landlady with a wise eye towards romantic gestures. She’s the one who clues spectators into using their phone lights to lend atmosphere to a scene happening on a starry night. Not incidentally, at various times the audience also furnishes the sounds of angry customers, a barn full of sheep and an unruly orphanage.
Then there are Mahira Kakkar, Eva Kaminsky and Patrick Kerr, popping up as late-arriving theatergoers who morph into vaguely defined commentators along the edges of the story who may also represent The Fates or gods, but anyway are agreeable company. Viewers conversant with Wilder’s works are likely to enjoy speculating on such possibilities, as with other puzzling aspects here. A worthwhile attempt to piece together an ambitious drama despite its missing, unknown or conflicting parts, The Emporium remains an unfulfilled promise of an expansive work on eternal themes.
Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium opened May 18, 2026, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through June 7. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
