This World of Tomorrow

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Iconic film star Tom Hanks is back on the New York stage in a play he co-wrote with playwright James Glossman and co-starring with Broadway favorite Kelli O’Hara. This World of Tomorrow, now at The Shed, is based on two of the short stories in Hanks’ 2017 collection Uncommon Type: all of “The Past is Important to Us” for Act One with a new sequel for Act Two , and the restaurant setting from “Go See Costas.” A time traveling rom-com, This World of Tomorrow has a quiet charm but is very old-fashioned in its theme and seems to be missing the wow factor under the direction of Tony Award winning director Kenny Leon, best-known for his work with the finest African American dramas of our time.

Beginning in 2089 when everything is automated and fresh products no longer exist, Bert Allenberry (Hanks), CEO of SKAEL (Salina Kansas Alternating Enterprise Lab) is given a birthday trip of 15 hours back to The New York World’s Fair (dubbed “The World of Tomorrow”) on June 8, 1939 through Chronometric Adventures. Unlike L.P. Hartley’s dictum “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” Bert believes that “Their future then was better than our Present is right now.” If the message of the play is that the past was better than the present, there is not much comfort in that for modern theatergoers. We do not have Bert’s option to go visit the past.

The three-times divorced Bert meets and is charmed by Carmen Perry, a Bronx bookkeeper, visiting the fair with her niece, the precocious and forward-looking teenaged Virginia. This keeps Bert coming back to visit the fair on that same day, trying to meet her earlier as on the subway, until the doctors at Chronometric Adventures inform him that to continue making the trip will damage his DNA and they ban him from future travel to that day. However, Bert has grown disenchanted with his time and its advanced progress. When his staff does research to discover Carmen’s fate after marrying a ne’er-do well husband and Bert is told that he can visit New York City for two hours on March 4, 1953 and realizes that he can have lunch with Carmen at her favorite diner in Greenwich Village, he sets out to change Carmen’s life and his own.

This World of Tomorrow resembles the films Back to the Future (Bert cannot risk changing anything), Groundhog Day for its repetition of the same events,  and You’ve Got Mail in which two undeclared lovers run the risk of missing each other. Both the message and the structure resemble those time travel movies of the 1940s like René Clair’s It Happened Tomorrow where the characters get to view a glimpse of the future only to end up back where they started. The problem with This World of Tomorrow is that the play attempts to do something that the movies do much better. While Derek McLane’s clever scenery making much use of projections on a series of square pillars which rearrange themselves for each scene as the projections change is appealing as well as eye-catching, it can only do so much to suggest the extensive and imposing World’s Fair, as well as other parts of New York City. All this will be more successful in a future film version in which CGI will allow us to really see the bygone fair and NYC in 1939.

Another problem is that there is no chemistry between Hanks and O’Hara though they try their best to act taken with each other. Hanks is rather flat as the tech CEO, intentionally so that he can hide behind his fictitious identity and not give too much away about the future. The usually charming O’Hara is extremely bland, making Carmen not very interesting. The rest of the seemingly large cast (seven of the additional nine actors play 17 roles between them) are more engaging. Kayli Carter playing much younger as the teenage Virginia steals every scene she is in with her exuberance, curiosity, high spirits and movie quotes. Ruben Santiago-Hudson as Bert’s partner in 2089 is wry and ironic, attempting to tell him things he does not want to hear.

Jay O. Sanders is memorable as both Carmen’s brother small shop keeper Max and the Greek Costas, the owner of the diner where she has lunch on workdays, though he is very much the same in both roles. Donald Webber Jr. demonstrates his versatility playing seven roles differently, from a scientist on Bert’s team to an elevator operator and later a waiter in a New York hotel, a NYC taxi driver, a dancing sweep at the fair, a pinochle-playing friend of Max, and a foreign sailor looking for a job from Costas. Both Kerry Bishé as Cyndee, Bert’s contractual romantic partner and scientist at SKAEL, and Jamie Ann Romero as the voice of the programmed ELMA (External Learning Machine Associate) get much reaction from the audience due to their superior knowledge of little known facts.

Designer Dede Ayite can’t do much with the pre-war clothes of 1939 for the ordinary people while her futuristic 2089 clothing is nothing but monochromatic uniforms in pale blue and white. Adam Honoré’s lighting augments the scenic design and the changing times while Justin Ellington’s sound design is excellent with the ambiance noises of New York City and the fair. The wigs created by J. Jared Janas are much more successful for the women than the men, making them look like they are trying to shed some years badly. Director Kenny Leon keeps the rather long story moving swiftly along without dealing with the real issue of the lack of message and the tacked on happy ending.

This World of Tomorrow is nothing but professional in both its acting and design, and has an allure all its own. How can it avoid it with beloved stars of stage and screen Tom Hanks and Kelli O’Hara? But as an attempt to wed the two genres of time travel and romantic comedy without having anything new to say about either is rather disappointing. While it should make a spectacular film with all of the 1939 sites to recreate, now it simply looks like a highly polished musical script but without the songs and dances.

This World of Tomorrow (through December 21, 2025)

The Shed’s Griffin Theater, Bloomberg Building, 545 W. 30^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.TheShed.org

Running time: two hours and 15 minutes including one intermission