‘The Emporium’ at the Alley is a hard sell
Thornton Wilder, who won the Pulitzer Prize for both “Our Town” and “The Skin of Our Teeth,” had another play called “The Emporium” that he worked on for decades but never completed. Austin playwright Kirk Lynn went through Wilder’s papers at Yale University and received permission from the estate to finish the script. The production of Wilder’s multiple versions of nine scenes at the Alley Theatre through June 2 is a world premiere.
When the audience enters the theater, the actors are already onstage, occupying Michael Locher’s clever, detailed and excellent set design, which doubles as a library and a department store, with murals, long tables, lamps and clothes. But the excitement of a world premiere quickly subsided as a convoluted narrative unfurled as awkwardly as the rolls of sky-blue paper that are tossed out later in a “dream” scene as representing water, a bizarre moment that felt like summer drama camp.
Since Wilder chose not to complete or produce the play, it is challenging to tell which parts are pure Wilder and what has been completed or altered by Lynn. But one change is the portrayal of John (Christopher Salazar) as a sort of contemporary version of Lynn, who is looking though materials trying to figure out the mystery of “The Emporium” and why Wilder did not bring it to the stage himself.
Current-day John says he wants to figure out the mystery of “The Emporium” and why Wilder didn’t write another play (ignoring the fact that the prolific Wilder wrote a lot of other things). But like many things in this production, that is a ball thrown high in the air that never comes down. Or, if it does, the audience is long past caring in this 2⁄2-hour 1 production that strains to be whimsical and funny while insisting that this patchwork of lines, which often make no sense at all, is great art from the great Wilder.
The “meta” move (the word is actually uttered) of reminding the audience that this is a play about a play that is a recasting of an unfinished script (an act of homage to the meta-theatrical components in “Our Town”) cues the audience that this is not just Wilder’s work. The jarring journeys back and forth through time, place, and the weird cocktail of post-modernism, magical and not-so-magical realism, social commentary and slap-stick comedic moments (some of which require audience participation), are a long way from Wilder’s signature aesthetic. He blended sentimentality, nostalgia and longing in a way that reminded us that individuals are important and that our communities depend on understanding this.
Inspired in part by writer Franz Kafka, this production is a departure from what made Wilder great. One of the things about resurrecting or premiering a work is that it helps you understand the artist. Yet one would never know Wilder was a serious scholar, professor, polyglot and intellectual with wide-ranging interests, including archaeology and history. While he wrote some farcical works (his “The Matchmaker” inspired the musical “Hello, Dolly!”), he was more interested in the emotional power of the individual.
These characters are parodies. The “romance” between John and Laurencia (Raven Justine Troup) is tepid as they constantly talk shop about the Emporium and what it means and so on. This play moves through too many scenes that have limited build up, yet still smack of anticlimax. This preachy play whines about how we are barred from entry to places like the Emporium, apparently something analogous to unlimited imagination and creativity that exacts high prices from its participants (read: artists and consumers of the dream of great inventions and art).
Some of us are crass capitalists, who are philistines and like to buy stuff at the competing store called Craigie’s. It is a tiresome message that forces you to feel bad if you are duped into authenticity or artistic endeavors, while complaining about the working conditions (a strange message from Houston’s premiere theater to convey), or middlebrow consumption that reinforces mainstream culture but doesn’t exploit its workers so much. Not sure how this math adds up, since both worlds depend on each other.
“The Emporium” is all over the map, with a shrill and disjointed narrative that is exhausting to follow, making it hard to care. This is not the fault of the actors, who make valiant efforts to entertain with material that is not commensurate with their talents. The wonderful actress and director Elizabeth Bunch is underutilized in a small part that seems tacked on with the other “watchers.” Bernice (Sally Wingert) and Miss Frisbee (Shawn Sides) are intriguing actresses, but their roles are cut out from underneath them by the weird structure of the play, with scenes that don’t connect in a satisfying way that elicit voluntary engagement or empathy.
The standout is the superlative David Rainey, who plays multiple characters with aplomb. From a cruel and abusive farmer, to an aging department store magnate, he captures the audience’s attention in a show that has a dizzying number of plates spinning in the air. Even his engagement with the front row, handing out ballots to vote on whether a prologue should be revealed, was more interesting than what was happening on the main stage. Almost everything in this play seems forced, as in the forcing of a manuscript that Wilder was not satisfied with and chose not to finish or produce on a stage. (Sometimes, it is better to leave well enough alone.)
The physical comedy seems to be shoved into the narrative for a few cheap laughs. The play assumes the audience isn’t very smart and must have basic terms like “metaphor” explained to it, but then doesn’t really deliver satisfying representations of any.
The Emporium “buries all complaints” — a sham of an enterprise that seems to use and abuse those who aspire to be a part of it and “never closes for good.” Maybe that is an unfortunate metaphor for the artistic “business,” but this play does not follow through with what that means for either artists or consumers, a mixed message of forced audience participation with a clear message that audiences are the impediment in the “struggle” of artistic expression. That would be OK if it weren’t such a long road through nine mixed-up scenes to make that point.