![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/01b409fa53011df8a0c9dec3e138cc0773-worldoftomorrow.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Tom Hanks in This World of Tomorrow at the Shed.
\n Photo: Marc J. Franklin\/Courtesy The Shed\n <\/p>\n
Whatever is happening at the Shed right now, it\u2019s not really a play. It\u2019s play-shaped, and actors put on costumes and wander around onstage for a couple of hours, repeating words they\u2019ve memorized. But I\u2019d be more comfortable calling the staging of This World of Tomorrow \u2014\u00a0starring Tom Hanks, written by Hanks and his collaborator James Glossman, directed by Kenny Leon, and based off elements of Hanks\u2019s short-story collection, Uncommon Type<\/a> \u2014\u00a0something more along the lines of \u201ca flight of fancy,\u201d \u201ca doodle on a napkin,\u201d or \u201ca college-drama-club project with the express purpose of making one person happy.\u201d There are plenty of talented folks around Hanks who have been roped into making this, and plenty of people in the audience who might be paying a lot to see him, but they don\u2019t factor into the equation. This thing is entirely about admiring its star. Hey, at least there are some fun hats.<\/p>\n This World of Tomorrow is not malicious in its intent. Tom Hanks, the moral nice-guy mayor of Hollywood, is the closest thing the film industry has to a Jimmy Stewart, and I\u2019m happy to believe that his forays into writing have developed out of genuine artistic interest in good-hearted Americana. (Inevitably, a character speaks admiringly about a typewriter<\/a>.) Whether a theater company should spend its time and resources developing and staging what he has written is another question. (No.) This World of Tomorrow, largely based on the Hanks story \u201cThe Past Is Important to Us,\u201d has him playing Bert Allenberry, a rich tech titan from around the year 2100 who keeps taking expensive daylong trips to the 1939 New York World\u2019s Fair via a company called Chronometric Adventures. He justifies the cost by telling his colleagues that he\u2019s enthralled by the way the past imagined a better future than the one we got, but it becomes clear very quickly that he\u2019s really doing it because he\u2019s infatuated with a winsome divorc\u00e9e named Carmen Perry (Kelli O\u2019Hara, at home in any role where she wears gloves). Carmen is visiting the fair with her spunky niece, Virginia (Kayli Carter, fumbling for any texture to play and landing on \u201cloud\u201d), and Hanks runs into her by accident, then comes back again and again. In each time loop, Carmen doesn\u2019t remember Bert, he so keeps reseducing her, using a little more information each time, an unsettling dynamic that\u2019s a blend between Groundhog Day, Midnight in Paris, and maybe even the deranged sci-fi drama Passengers<\/a>, all films that aren\u2019t known for their sensitivity toward women\u2019s agency.<\/p>\n There\u2019s where you might expect a play to develop some dramatic friction, perhaps as a commentary on the dangers of nostalgia or on one extremely rich man\u2019s sense of entitlement. Any such turn might be a current, if obvious, direction for a play like this. But one thing you can say about This World of Tomorrow is that it doesn\u2019t do much of what you might expect. There\u2019s little tension anywhere or really any significant attempt to undercut Bert\u2019s rosy gaze on the past. Hanks and Glossman have written a few throwaway lines that acknowledge the racism of the 1930s \u2014 Black members of the ensemble are often called upon to roll their eyes at Bert\u2019s cheeriness about 1939 \u2014 and in the play\u2019s announcement, Alex Poots, the Shed\u2019s artistic director, told the New York Times<\/a> that \u201cthere is reference to the rise in authoritarianism,\u201d which I can translate as \u201cthere is a line about how Bert should have used time travel to kill Hitler.\u201d<\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t say that This World of Tomorrow embraces Bert\u2019s nostalgia, either, so much as it just lets his quest for Carmen happen. The script is too rudderless to navigate toward any specific theme, and Leon, who has become the go-to director for soggy celebrity-driven<\/a> drama<\/a>, hasn\u2019t pushed his cast toward any specific idea. (According to a conversation in your program, Leon said the play is about \u201ctime and love\u201d; one is a concept an actor can\u2019t play, and the other is something no one is convincingly playing.) Somehow, despite what must have been a substantial budget, the set looks cheap. Derek McLane\u2019s design resembles a cybernetic wilderness, a spare set of moving columns that indicate new locations and settings through screens and projections. If Bert\u2019s so enamored with the innovations of the World\u2019s Fair, couldn\u2019t we see re-creations of a few of them onstage? Why not show us the famous robot<\/a> or the celebrity cow<\/a>?<\/p>\n Instead, in the space of where it could allow for wonder and enthusiasm, This World of Tomorrow tends toward overexplanation. The script is remarkably heavy on the technobabble and the scenes in which Hanks\u2019s colleagues from the future throw nonsense time-travel-related nouns around while wearing Star Trek outfits. I couldn\u2019t care less about the acids that supposedly accumulate when you go back and forth in time. The script\u2019s most engaging indulgence is a series of scenes that occur in the second act as Bert and Carmen meet in the 1950s at a Greek diner, which is run by a grumbly Jay O. Sanders. Sanders almost convinces you that you\u2019re watching a real play about a real man, commanding the stage with a gruff bark and mining humor from his character\u2019s insistence on teaching everyone Greek vocabulary as he picks up some English. I\u2019m not sure how his presence is supposed to relate to the rest of the story or why Hanks felt it was necessary to include it \u2014 perhaps his wife, the Greek American actress and producer<\/a> Rita Wilson, had his ear \u2014 but at least it\u2019s an interestingly idiosyncratic gesture.<\/p>\n Yet the audience isn\u2019t at the Shed for idiosyncrasies. Hanks is the be-all and end-all of This World of Tomorrow, and, sure, when you\u2019re sitting in the audience a few dozen yards away from him, it\u2019s hard to deny his loping movie-star magnetism. He has something of the energy of a beloved and aging family dog, padding up to you to lay his paws on your lap. It\u2019s hard to judge Hanks\u2019s strengths as a stage actor given that this script gives him so few challenges, but when he delivers several jokes about Bert\u2019s discovery that they have real milk at the World\u2019s Fair \u2014 presumably, an unspoken environmental collapse has eliminated dairy \u2014 he is deeply charming. In those moments, the audience lets out a sigh of relief, as if to say, Ah, yes, the celebrity we\u2019re here to see is giving us the performance we wanted. It\u2019s his own persona he\u2019s performing, not a character. We come to see plenty of stage actors for a taste of their familiar forms, from Kristin Chenoweth<\/a> to Laurie Metcalf<\/a>, but perhaps putting a movie star onstage and asking them to actually perform in a play is an extra hurdle we needn\u2019t ask them to clear. Why not just revert to something more direct, more medieval and churchy? Do away with the scripts, with the directors, with the rest of the ensemble, with the pretense. Have them stand there, in pristine and golden-lit silence for two hours at the center of the stage, and bask in the awe and admiration. Audiences could think of it as a pilgrimage to visit a holy relic \u2014 or its own act of sacramental theater. He\u2019s not performing, after all. You are.<\/p>\n This World of Tomorrow is at the Shed through December 21. <\/p>\n Sign up for The Critics<\/p>\n A weekly dispatch on the cultural discourse, for subscribers only.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n