Thornton Wilder’s Last, Unfinished Play ‘The Emporium’ Champions Art Over Commerce

Imagine that you’re a playwright and one day, while doing research, you come across the manuscript for the last, unfinished full-length drama by Thornton Wilder, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Our Town” and “The Skin of our Teeth.” Kirk Lynn, who had this experience not long ago, knew what he had to do.“I felt like I unlocked a bonus level where not only can you read him, but you can touch the material and feel like you’re working with him,” Mr. Lynn told the Associated Press roughly two years ago, when “Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium,” a new version of the play completed by the latter-day writer, who also teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, had its world premiere at Houston’s Alley Theatre.Now this “Emporium” has arrived in New York, with a few tweaks, at the off-Broadway home of Classic Stage Company, in a production once again helmed by Alley’s artistic director, Rob Melrose. Messrs. Lynn and Melrose have clearly strived to capture Wilder’s essence and reflect how his deeply humanistic writing evolved, engaging and challenging the audience literally and intellectually.The fourth wall comes down, as it did way back when “Our Town” was first produced, immediately: Joe Tapper, the actor who will play John, the protagonist, essentially assumes Mr. Lynn’s identity, briefly describing the discovery of “Emporium” and placing it in the context of Wilder’s career. The synopsis left by the late playwright focused, we’re told, on “an orphan, raised in the middle of Nowhere America, who, in his teens, runs away to the big city and spends the rest of his life trying make a name for himself at one of the great department stores.”That quest, as it has come to fruition, involves relentless struggle, while posing moral and existential questions that jibe with Wilder’s interests in such matters. “Emporium” was inspired, according to that AP interview, by “The Castle,” a Frank Kafka novel — also unfinished, and published posthumously —tracing a village run by elusive authorities, and a man’s repeated, frustrated attempts to gain access.John’s path, after fleeing the orphanage and then an abusive farmer who adopts him, is similar. He dreams only of working for the Emporium, a name that looms in large capital letters, sometimes lit like a marquee, over Walt Spangler’s simple, cleverly utilitarian set. Bureaucratic complications keep interfering, forcing him to accept employment at Craigie’s, a rival store that seems far less grand.But The Emporium continues to haunt John, whose stubbornness and earnestness are made endearing by Mr. Tapper, like an unrequited love interest; he’s even drawn to a female employee, Laurencia, elegantly portrayed by Cassia Thompson. It doesn’t help that some of the older men and women he must appeal to on his journey, starting with the orphanage superintendents and the farmer and his wife —all of them wittily played by Derek Smith and Candy Buckley— seem to have some connection to that mythical titular establishment.Passive and active audience participation is solicited throughout the show’s two acts, with cast members sometimes addressing us as if we were ensemble characters and at other points encouraging direct responses. (If you’ve ever wanted to baa like a sheep in public, here’s your chance.) Before intermission, three additional actors, who figure into the show as a group, mention that Wilder wrote an outline for the play explaining what the Emporium represents, and invite viewers to vote on whether they want to hear a summary of his vision — “a prologue,” they call it — at the beginning of Act Two.At the preview I attended, the vote was 42 to eight in favor of hearing the summary. I won’t reveal its specific message, but the gist is suggested eventually by Craigie, owner of that rival store. “Commerce without the distraction of artistry, that has been the Craigie goal,” the old man tells us; the Emporium, in contrast, is “a chaotic, elitist, bohemian establishment.” Whatever dark and mysterious forces have lurked there, perhaps, John has sensed the existence of a soul, something he can belong to; that verb is used, along with “belonging,” eighteen times in the show.I’ll offer just one other hint: “Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium” may be most fully appreciated by those involved with, or committed to, theater or the arts generally. But even casual fans will enjoy and be moved by this realization of a most heady task.

Thornton Wilder’s Last, Unfinished Play ‘The Emporium’ Champions Art Over Commerce

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