A good portion of the audience Barn I don't think I recognized it Tom Hanks when he first appeared on stage in “This world of tomorrow“, even though he is the man they came to see and hear. Hanks wrote the play himself, along with co-writer James Glossman; it is an adaptation of several pre-existing Hanks stories.
Who knew he had time?
Movie stars who became famous in their youth often appear older. In this case, Hanks' famous big and friendly forehead seemed to shrink, or maybe it was simply covered up by hair and makeup. The idea, obviously, was for Hanks to look like your average retro Joe, with mannerisms more at home in 1939 than whatever dystopian artificial intelligence-driven fate awaits us all at the end of this century.
This is approximately the plot of the play “This World of Tomorrow”, staged by the director Kenny LeonIt would be more correct to call “This World of Yesterday.”
Hanks' Burt Allenberry, a character name straight out of a Frank Capra movie, works for some high-tech company in Kansas that has figured out how to send people back in time for short visits—stay too long and you'll run into trouble. Prone to self-exploration and believing that more knowledge about the past can answer questions about his future, Bert embarks on such a journey. He lands back in 1939 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. in Queens.
There he meets a very charming working class woman named Carmen (Kelly O'Hara), who has had bad luck in her marriage but is enjoying a day at the fair with her feisty young niece Virginia (Kaylee Carter).
Bert is having such a great time in 1939 Queens with O'Hara's Carmen that he plans to return, meet Carmen at a Greek restaurant (owned by Jay O. Sanders) and discover that the past, with all its faults, may yet very well be better than the future.
Of all American actors, few are as empathetic as Hanks, a highly accomplished stage and film artist who over the decades has curated his roles sufficiently to become the closest living equivalent Jimmy Stewartone whose natural goodness and kindness seem to appear five minutes before the person himself. He is humble, emotionally available, guileless, feels everything, really, and in this play he plays a man very similar to what we associate with him. His ability to charm should never be underestimated.
This World of Tomorrow, however, is a somewhat strange compilation of stories, and although I was with it for almost the entirety of Act I, things go awry in Act II as the narrative grapples more with the usual problem of time travel stories, namely how the act of going back affects what either happened recently or didn't. (Back to the Future fans who got this right will know what I'm talking about). Some things begin to seem repetitive and disjointed. And not everything makes sense.
However, you won't be surprised to learn that Hanks and O'Hara (also Carter, actually) are quite charming together, and my thoughts wandered to what may have been an unintentional theme here: how in 1939, cutting-edge tech companies won the support of everyday people by giving them a really cool, safe, Epcot-style experience. You don't see it that often anymore. We could use another World's Fair full of wonders before the wonders themselves make us all obsolete.
Overall it's a simmering theatrical piece rather than a rapid simmer, and the burners do go out from time to time. But it's a warm experience when the weather is cool.
And since a person is always obsessed with the road he has not traveled, I also liked these themes. This World of Tomorrow clearly wants to avoid sentimentality, but let's be real. It trades on nostalgia, not least because there's so much to dislike these days.
