Playwrights aren’t always the best judge of their own material. But Thornton Wilder probably got it right when he left his play The Emporium incomplete and unproduced. This long-lost work, discovered among Wilder’s archives some 75 years after he first started writing it, has been finished by playwright Kirk Lynn, who discovered Wilder’s handwritten draft. The result received its world premiere in 2024 at Houston’s Alley Theatre and is now being presented in New York by the Classic Stage Company.
It would be thrilling to report that The Emporium is a newly discovered masterpiece by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. But while the play is distinctly Wilderian in its style and themes, it comes across today like a rambling, disjointed mess that only periodically sparks to life. Of course, it’s hard to know exactly how much Lynn contributed, but from what’s on display here it seems evident that the play, which at one point was supposed to be headed for Broadway in a production starring Montgomery Clift, was best left in the drawer.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be of major interest for Wilder fans and theater buffs in general, especially considering that Wilder wrote only a few full-length plays in his lengthy career. The evening begins with the central character, John (Joe Tapper), addressing the audience directly and providing a brief primer about the play’s background and how the version we’re about to see came into being.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★☆☆ review here.]
The plot is deceptively simple. John, a sort of Everyman, makes his way from an orphanage to a farm to ultimately the big city, where he dreams of working at The Emporium, a department store above all others. Once he gets there, he discovers much to his frustration that while the store has many employees, including the fetching Laurencia (Cassia Thompson), there seems to be no mechanism for applying for a job there. He spends the rest of the play fruitlessly attempting to attain his goal, having to settle for a job at Craigie’s, a much less distinguished retail establishment.
Apparently influenced by Kafka, specifically The Castle, Wilder crafted a heavily allegorical (no surprise there) dark comedy infused with absurdist and magical realist elements. In case you’re wondering what it all means and what exactly the playwright had in mind, you have an option to find out. At the end of the first act, the performers tell us that Wilder originally conceived of a prologue to the play that would be presented, illogically, at the beginning of Act 2. He never got around to actually writing it, but his intentions were made clear in his journals. We’re invited to vote in the lobby whether or not we want to hear it, and at the performance attended (and I suspect at most of them), the answer was overwhelmingly positive.
What Wilder intended, apparently, was that the Emporium was a metaphor for a life in the arts, in which both great fulfillment and great risks are very possible. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure, as one of the characters cheekily suggests. “I have heard it suggested that even the metaphor of the Emporium might itself be a metaphor,” he says with a smile.
It’s a provocative, thoughtful idea, but the execution turns out to be a slog, running two-and-a-quarter hours and filled with dense verbiage that fails to sustain attention. The cutesy attempts at meta-theatricality prove more tiresome than amusing, such as having the audience bleat like sheep, turn on their cell phone lights to suggest stars in the sky, or fill out mock complaint forms. Early in the play, three “latecomers” arrive, explaining that they’ve just had dinner at Veselka, but they of course turn out to be minor characters in the play.
Director Rob Melrose, who previously staged the world premiere, does his best to provide an antic, imaginative staging, but the text ultimately defeats him. The performances, however, are fine, with Tapper compelling in the central role (even if the part would seem to suggest the casting of someone younger, more boyish) and Cassia Thompson appealing as the store clerk with whom John falls in love. Eva Kaminsky, Mahira Kakkar, and Patrick Kerr provide solid support as the three interlopers who turn out to be “wards of the Retreat of Retired Department Store Workers.” But the real standouts are stage veterans Candy Buckley and Derek Smith, who vividly and entertainingly embody several roles each.
Performed on Walt Spangler’s endlessly versatile set (the stagehands work very hard) dominated by massive sculpted letters spelling out “THE EMPORIUM,” the production has clearly been lovingly crafted. But while we can be grateful that a lost Wilder work has been rescued from obscurity, we shouldn’t pretend that he didn’t abandon it for a reason.
Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium opened May 18, 2026, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through June 7. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
