Off-B'way/B'way Review: Animal Wisdom; The Emporium; Celebrity Autobiography

Kenita R. Miller in Animal Wisdom.
Credit: Ben Arons

The composer-theater artist Heather Christian has made a big splash with her previous work Oratorio for Living Things, garnering a shelfful of accolades including special New York Drama Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur Genius grant. Though the music was lovely, I found the abstract choral piece vague and pretentious in its 2022 Ars Nova production. Her autobiographical Animal Wisdom now at Signature Theater after a run at Bushwick Star in 2017, is somewhat more satisfying, giving the audience more to hang onto. There are still long stretches of incomprehensible vocalizing, but there’s a stronger narrative arc here than in Oratorio. 

A note from the author-composer handed out before the Animal performance explains “It’s my life story, as clearly as I can tell it (which is not very clearly at all). It is a requiem within a requiem.” Audience members enter scenic designer Emmie Finckel’s fascinating environment—a combination of lush country garden and cosy antique store. Colorful flowers and plants alternate with shelves of knickknacks and curios, as well as a functioning soda dispenser and what appears to be an old-fashioned slot machine. The main performer “H” (incredibly talented Kenita R. Miller) explains the stories we are about to hear are from Heather, not her.

Then the piece begins. With the aide of a delightfully lively six-piece band, H unfolds her tale of growing up in Natchez, Mississippi where the invasive vegetation known as kudzu and catfish the size of buses proliferate. Spirits are also in abundance as H informs us two of her closest companions were the playful ghosts Victor and Johanna. Her late grandfather is now inhabiting her car and her grandmother is reincarnated as a red bird. The libretto doesn’t really fit into a neat, linear narrative. We get stories of H’s supernatural encounters and the eccentric characters who populate her childhood, but her attitudes towards them is fuzzy. Christian’s beautiful lyrical songs which Miller skillfully and movingly sings are sad and melodic, but the source of H’s sorrow and conflict is not clearly defined.

Kenita R. Miller and cast of Animal Wisdom.
Credit: Ben Arons

Keenan Tyler Oliphant’s direction is sure and strong and Miller’s interactions with the band are charming and spontaneous. There are several theatrically exciting moments such as a funny sequence where the band and H don house dresses and wigs, and light up cigarettes to play H’s domineering piano teacher. There are haunting poetic touches like the spectral lighting by Masha Tsimring shining through a rain-drenched window or the genuinely frightening nightmare before the grandmother’s death. I was touched by the recollection of H’s grandpa feeding his dying spouse tiny peach pieces and there is a startling coup de theatre in darkness to bring the proceedings to a close (no specific details or spoilers). But these disparate elements, entertaining as some of them are and as enchanting and hypnotic as the music is, fail to add up to a cohesive whole. Christian’s main theme remains as elusive as the ghosts that haunt her.

Candy Buckley and Joe Tapper in
The Emporium.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Classic Stage Company’s production of Thornton Wilder’s unfinished work The Emporium is not as confounding as Christian’s piece, but its symbolism can be difficult to decipher. Luckily, the meaning gets explained for us…maybe (more on that later). Playwright Kirk Lynn found the incomplete manuscript among Wilder’s papers and augmented the script. There was a world premiere in 2024 at the Alley Theater in Houston and this CSC staging marks the work’s NYC debut. Like Wilder’s celebrated works Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, The Emporium combines allegory and fable to deliver a message on the resiliency of the human spirit and the quest to find artistic fulfillment.

 

The evening begins with an introduction explaining the history of the play spoken by the actor Joe Tapper amid a series of long library tables piled with pages of handwritten notes—presumably representing Wilder’s incomplete script. (Walt Spangler designed the flexible set.) As the story proper commences, a foundling named John (Tapper) leaves a miserable orphanage and his subsequent oppressive home on a hardscrabble farm for the big city and employment at the mysterious Emporium, a large department store where the prices vary wildly and wages are sometimes not paid. But the employees feel fulfilled there. The alternative is the rival store Craigy’s where the hours are clearly defined, all employees are invited to the annual company picnic, and everything is orderly and precise. Craigy’s represents “commerce without the distraction of artistry” and the “quick fix” yet their workers are oddly dissatisfied.

The meat of the play is John’s conflict between toiling at The Emporium or Craigy’s. He falls in love with Laurencia (enchanting Cassia Thompson), a devoted Emporium employee, but settles for the security of Craigy’s. A trio of department store retirees (Mahira Kakkar, Eva Kaminsky, Patrick Kerr), observing the play as audience members, act as a kind of Greek chorus.  

Candy Buckley and Joe Tapper in
The Emporium.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Wilder never specifically lies out his metaphor of what the two department stores stand for, but Lynn has inserted a a gimmicky device of allowing the theatergoers to vote during intermission to have his meaning explained at the beginning of the second act. Our audience voted for the explanation which won’t be revealed here (again no spoilers). Even with the theme clearly spelled out, Emporium still feels incomplete and fragmentary like a script assembled of disparate parts (which in fact it is.) Rob Melrose, who directed the Houston premiere, stages this uneven curio with verve and efficiency while a strong cast endows Wilder’s symbolic characters with depth and purpose. Tapper forcefully conveys John’s anguished striving for a substantive life as does Thompson. Candy Buckley and Derek Smith inhabit a variety of roles with irresistible wit. I loved Buckley’s worldly-wise landlady, conniving employment agent, and covetous heiress as well as Smith’s monstrous Craigy executive, abusive farmer, and fussy floor manager. Kakkar, Kaminsky and Kerr bring dimension to the trio of observers.    

Like Animal Wisdom, The Emporium contains several praiseworthy elements but doesn’t really come together. It’s interesting as an artifact of Wilder’s oeuvre but fails to make a final sale.   

Jackie Hoffman in Celebrity Autobiography.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for
MurphyMade

While the previous two highly esoteric pieces make your brain work to figure out their deeper implications, Celebrity Autobiography, the first offering of the 2026-27 Broadway season, just wants to give you a couple of hearty chuckles. Originally presented Off-Broadway in 2008-09 (where it won a Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience), this goofy sort-of revue features a rotating cast reading unintentionally hilarious excerpts from the memoirs of famous people. That’s it. Is it worth paying Broadway prices? That depends on how much your value your giggles.  

There are certainly several side-splitting sequences. Among my favorites from the first cast: Jackie Hoffman impersonating Oprah Winfrey explaining how to prepare chi tea as if she were delivering a lecture in nuclear physics; TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone reading from separate memoirs of Geraldo Rivera and Liza Minnelli on a series of almost hook-ups; in a Broadway-themed segment, Cantone, Andrea Martin and Jeff Hiller devastatingly funny as Carol Channing, Ethel Merman and Sandy the dog from Annie. The finale is a reprise from the 2008 edition I saw at the Triad: a mash-up of memoirs detailing the romantic entanglements involving Debbie Reynolds, Eddie Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton. This one’s an oldie but a goody, full of gossipy details, especially since it’s introduced by Mankiewicz as if it were an old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster on TCM. 

Ben Mankiewicz and Mario Cantone in
Celebrity Autobiography.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Some of the vignettes are based on one-joke premises and soon wear out their welcome. These include Neil Sedaka’s digestive issues, Dolly Parton’s diet, and Tiger Woods’ sexually suggestive description of his golf game. But the majority of the bits are gloriously guffaw-inducing.    

                                                    

Directed smoothly by the shows’ creators Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel, who also participate in the readings, Celebrity Autobiography is a fun-filled goof. If you don’t expect more, you won’t be disappointed.

Animal Wisdom: May 19—June 14. Signature Theater, 480 W. 42nd St., NYC. Running time: two hours with no intermission. signaturetheater.org.

The Emporium: May 18—June 7. Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St., NYC. Running time: two hours and 15 mins. including intermission. classicstage.org.

Celebrity Autobiography: May 18—Aug. 16. Shubert Theater, 225 W. 44th St., NYC. Running time: 90 mins. with no intermission. telecharge.com.