The Emporium

John, discovered as an infant in a basket outside the grand department store known as the Emporium, grows up haunted by the place’s almost metaphysical allure. Like so many Wilder protagonists, he is both an innocent and a seeker, a fundamentally decent American pilgrim wandering toward a destination he only dimly understands. The Emporium itself becomes at once department store, cathedral, artistic calling, romantic ideal, and existential mirage. Wilder once described the play as “a mixture of Horatio Alger and Franz Kafka,” and the description proves hilariously apt: John’s yearning possesses the earnestness of American self-invention while the bureaucratic evasions surrounding the store carry the absurd, unknowable menace of a dream. [more]