Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium ★★★★

Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium isn’t one of those big Broadway productions that uses a heralded playwright’s name as part of an elongated title, the eye-rolling marketing ploy currently employed by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Instead, it’s an audacious Off-Broadway production that simultaneously pays homage to a remarkable playwright as it presents one of his never-completed works.

Fluent in four languages, Wilder translated and adapted many works for the stage, including The Matchmaker, which later became the basis for the musical Hello, Dolly! As for original full-length plays, he only wrote two that made their way to production: Our Town and The Skin of our Teeth. Both won Pulitzers — a track record unlikely to be repeated, with a respectful nod to Margaret Edson, whose sole play, Wit, won the prize — and Our Town continues to be one of the most produced plays in America.

But there was a third play, one that was announced for Broadway in 1954 with great anticipation but never arrived. Wilder titled it The Emporium, but its ideas and structure never fully coalesced for him and all he left behind was a synopsis — a teenaged orphan living in nowhere America runs away to the big city to work in a mythical department store — and 360 pages of handwritten notes.

Fast forward to 2009. Kirk Lynn, playwright, academic, and founder of The Rude Mechs, an avant-garde theatre collective based in Austin, was presented with a box of those 360 pages while doing research on Wilder at Yale. Lynn then, with the permission of the Wilder Estate, obsessively finished the play that Wilder could not, which explains the apt official credit he receives: “completed and adapted by.”

The result now playing at Classic Stage Company is an ambitious, slightly overlong work that includes a prologue Lynn wrote that the audience votes during intermission whether or not to see at the start of the second act. The audience at the reviewed performance voted to see it — placing a prologue halfway through a show is a structural twist that Wilder would likely have adored — and given the information revealed therein, if you see the show, vote yes, as it provides clarity and insight from a work that is often crowded and murky with meaning.

Director Rob Melrose clearly has a great sense of this show’s inherent challenges, and he wisely keeps the goings-on inventive and interactive. The playful cast also rises to the occasion, especially Candy Buckley and Derek Smith, both of whom get a buffet of characters to inhabit and have a grand time doing so. A special commendation is also due to set designer Walt Spangler, who’s impressively made the most of CSC’s space to draw the audience in.

Whereas Our Town is rightfully lauded for the dual impact of its simplicity and profundity, Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium struggles to fully achieve either, but the effort is nonetheless worthwhile. This assembled last work of Wilder is a genuine curiosity that isn’t for everyone, and those who bend towards the classically made play will likely be frustrated. But for fans of Wilder and those who like their theatre to be structurally and thematically more adventurous, this production is not to be missed.