SHOPPING FOR MEANING

Thornton Wilder’s long-lost play
arrives decades late, still reaching
for something just beyond its grasp

Joe Tapper

Seventy-five years is a long time to wait for a world premiere. But that is precisely the circumstance surrounding The Emporium, Thornton Wilder’s long-unfinished play, now receiving its New York debut at Classic Stage Company—and the wait, historically speaking, is well worth it.

Candy Buckley

Wilder’s manuscript ran more than 300 handwritten pages, and though The New York Times announced an upcoming Broadway production in both 1950 and 1952, neither materialized. The play remained incomplete at Wilder’s death in 1975, after which his papers were archived at Yale’s Beinecke Library. Playwright Kirk Lynn discovered the manuscript in 2009, and his edited, revised version premiered at Houston’s Alley Theatre in 2024 before arriving in New York. That Classic Stage Company has championed this production deserves its own round of applause.

Patrick Kerr, Mahira Kakkar, and Eva Kaminsky

Candy Buckley, Patrick Kerr, Joe Tapper, Eva Kaminsky, and Mahira Kakkar

The story centers on John (Joe Tapper), a young man consumed by a singular, mysterious longing: to work at The Emporium, an enigmatic department store. As he inquires about employment, he finds himself responsible for an abandoned infant. Being an orphan himself, he knows exactly what to do, delivering the baby to the very orphanage that once took him in. His foster mother, as she bid him farewell, confessed that she too once worked at The Emporium, that she too was an orphan, and that the store is full of them. His pursuit of The Emporium proves equally circular and elusive. Employment agencies take his money and offer nothing useful. It is only Laurencia (Cassia Thompson), an Emporium employee, who finally illuminates the secret: you simply show up and do what others are doing until you make the work your own. Forced by economic reality into a job at the far less glamorous rival store Craigie’s, John struggles with his continued search and longing.

Derek Smith

Cassia Thompson

This, in Wilder’s vision, is no coincidence. The Emporium is an extended metaphor for the artistic life—a calling that cannot be formally applied for, only answered. No one auditions; they simply begin, imitating others until something authentic emerges. Being overworked, poorly compensated, and faced with the distinct possibility of having little to show for it are all part of the bargain. The parallel is made explicit in an optional prologue to Act Two—the audience votes on whether to see it—and it is illuminating enough that one wishes Wilder had woven it more organically into the fabric of the play rather than leaving it to a supplementary device. Without it, the allegory risks remaining esoteric.

Mahira Kakkar, Eva Kaminsky, Candy Buckley, and Patrick Kerr

The production embraces the theatrical strategies Wilder perfected in Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth: direct address, mime, audience participation, broken fourth walls, and a gleeful rejection of realism. We’re encouraged to hiss at an old man sneaking medicinal sips of liquor. We bleat like sheep on cue. We fill out department store complaint cards and shine our phone lights onto a fire-escape scene beneath a simulated night sky. Props and activity are sometimes mimed, sometimes physical. A single glass bottle begins as a Molotov cocktail and morphs across scenes into a bottle of liquor, then a tube of glue, then something else entirely. Three cast members (Mahira Kakkar, Eva Kaminsky, and Patrick Kerr) are planted as latecomers who end up seated onstage, gradually absorbed into the action. The inventiveness is thoroughly Wilder—radical in ambition, playful in execution.

Eva Kaminsky, Derek Smith, Candy Buckley, and Mahira Kakkar

Rob Melrose‘s direction manages these many moving parts with fluency, keeping scene transitions swift and the theatrical machinery from creaking. Walt Spangler‘s scenic design serves the thrust space handsomely: an exterior storefront sign that reads as genuinely grand, offset by a worn wooden floor and three versatile tables that anchor the play’s many scenes. Anya Kutner‘s props round out the atmosphere. Alejo Vietti‘s costumes and Charles G. LaPointe‘s wigs are essential weapons in the evening’s most advantageous arsenal.

Candy Buckley and Joe Tapper

Which brings us to Candy Buckley and Derek Smith. Playing a different character in nearly every scene, their work here is a master class in transformation—physical, vocal, and internal. The comedy they discover doesn’t come from jokes or punchlines but from a glance, a posture, an accent, or a perfectly mispronounced word. They elevate the material with the ease of performers who have internalized technique so thoroughly that it looks effortless. They are, without qualification, pure gold—and one can only wonder why stages far larger than this one aren’t pursuing them more urgently. Casting directors should take notice.

Cassia Thompson, Joe Tapper, and Candy Buckley

As a dramatic whole, The Emporium does not achieve the emotional impact of Our Town or the apocalyptic sweep of The Skin of Our Teeth. It still feels somewhat unfinished, shaped after the fact from a sprawling manuscript—and the seams occasionally show. Its themes of ambition, unreachable longing, and the search for meaning are present but unevenly developed, more suggested than fully realized. Yet there is something genuinely moving about encountering a great playwright’s imagination still in motion, still reaching. For theatre historians and students—or for anyone who wants to witness two exceptional actors doing extraordinary work—The Emporium makes a compelling, if complicated, case for its own existence. Sometimes the reach matters as much as the grasp.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photos by Marc J. Franklin

The Emporium
Classic Stage Company
Lynn F. Angelson Theater, 136 E. 13th St. in New York City
ends on June 7, 2026
for tickets, visit Classic Stage Company

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦