[Below are three reposts
that constitute Part 2 of “Tom Hanks, Playwright.” The first piece is excerpts from the
interview of well-known film star Hanks by Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’s Late Show, on 3 November 2025. Following on that posting are two reviews of
the Off-Broadway production, the première of This World of Tomorrow, the
play cowritten by Hanks with James Glossman, which ran at The Shed from 18 November
to 21 December 2025.
[In Part
1, which I recommend reading before the installment below, I posted three
articles from the New York Times announcing
the coming production, covering the opening night, and presenting Hanks’s own
discussion of his inaugural venture as a dramatist. Those articles contain information that will
be referenced below and explanations and commentary from me, including the
background and details of the play, that I have not repeated in the second part.]
STEPHEN COLBERT INTERVIEWS TOM HANKS
3
November 2025
(Late
Show with Stephen Colbert; Season 11, Episode 31)
[Below are excerpts from the
guest appearance of Tom Hanks on The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert (CBS-TV; Channel 2 in New York City) of 3 November 2025. Hanks talks extensively about This World
of Tomorrow, which was in previews at the time of the broadcast, but he
talked also about a number of other, unrelated subjects as well. I have, therefore lifted only the passages concerning
the Off-Broadway play for this posting. (Omitted sections of the show are marked
with ellipses.)
[There is no video of this LSSC episode that’s in one take, so this post is taken
from YouTube, which posted the show in segments, four of which are devoted to
the Hanks interview. (When the show was
broadcast. Colbert did his customary opening, including a monologue, before the
first break and after the Hanks interview, he had a musical guest, Mavis
Staples, a rhythm and blues and gospel singer and civil rights activist, who
performed the last segment of the show.)
[The YouTube videos are broken
into separate posts at each point in the show when Colbert takes a commercial
break. (The link above, for those who want
to view the whole interview, is the first segment (“It’s ‘Tom Hanks Riding The
Subway’ Season In New York City”); the following three segments are at: #2 – “‘They Are Gonna Have A Real
Hard Time Firing Me’ - Tom Hanks On His Play ‘This World of Tomorrow’";
#3 – “If You Could Spend
12 Hours In The Past, Where And When Would You Go? - Tom Hanks”; #4 – “Why The Original ‘Toy Story’
Movie Had To Be Thrown Out - Tom Hanks.”
I didn’t look for videos of the opening or closing segments, Colbert’s monologue
and Staples’s performance.)
[The transcript published
on Rick On Theater is based on the
verbatim transcript from YouTube, which is computer-generated. It’s full of inaccuracies, omissions, and
mistranscriptions, so I emended it myself from the audio of the recordings, creating
a hybrid. It’s more accurate and
complete than the ones accompanying the YouTube videos online.]
Stephen Colbert: Hey, welcome back,
everybody! Give it up for Louis Cato and the Late Show Band, everybody!
Ladies and gentlemen, my friends – you know my first guest
tonight, because he is Tom Hanks!
[cheers and applause]
Tom Hanks: Thank you, thank you!
. . . .
Hanks: I’m doing a play right now called – down at .
. . uhh –
Colbert: I’m doing
it right here [takes out playbill for
this world of tomorrow].
You’re in town – you’ve cowritten and starred in a new play,
This World of Tomorrow.
There you are – there it is. It’s at The Shed –
Hanks: It’s at The Shed. Directed by Kenny Leon and
cowritten by James Glossman. I can’t tell you how much we love the cast.
But – you say you’re on Broadway and everybody knows where
Broadway is. We are on Broadway right now.
[The Ed Sullivan Theatre,
where The Late Show is recorded, is a 1927 theater at 1697 Broadway at West
53rd Street, formerly a legitimate Broadway house first named Hammerstein’s
Theatre (and then under various names). The Columbia Broadcasting System leased
it in 1937 as a radio studio; it was converted for television use in 1949. The theater
housed The Ed Sullivan Show from 1953 to 1971, as well as other CBS shows;
it was renamed after Sullivan (1901-74) in 1967. The Sullivan was purchased by
CBS in 1993 and has housed The Late Show since that year, first under
David Letterman, then under Colbert since 2015.]
Colbert: You’re
literally on Broadway.
Hanks: Anybody in the world can come to New York and
say, ‘Take me to Broadway.’ Or they can walk to Broadway themselves if they
know where it is.
You come to New York and say, ‘Come to The Shed,’ and
they’re like, ‘What? For discount garden tools?’
It’s an art installation – it’s a space for art and it’s
downtown in Hudson Yards. But letting everyone know where The Shed is, is a bit
of a challenge. So if I could have a slight shuffle beat.
[scats a beat for the
band. the band joins in.]
Yeah, okay.
Ready?
[rhythmic chant.
hanks, seated, keeps time with hand and arm gestures as he shifts his upper
body and makes animated facial expressions.]
It’s The Shed
Off the High Line
By the Vessel
In Hudson Yards.
It’s The Shed
By the Vessel
Off the Highline
In Hudson Yards.
Wanta see
A show
At The Shed?
Well, just head down
To Hudson Yards.
It’s The Shed
Off the Highline
By the Vessel
In Hudson Yards.
There you go. So,
come on down!
[The High Line is an elevated
public park and greenway in New York City, built on a disused freight rail line
on Manhattan’s West Side. It extends from Gansevoort Street at Washington
Street in Greenwich Village to West 34th Street and 12th Avenue near Hudson
Yards.
[The Vessel is an interactive
public landmark and art installation in Hudson Yards. The structure is 150 feet
tall (equivalent to about 12-15 stories) and consists of 154 interconnected
flights of stairs, nearly 2,500 steps, and 80 landings, forming a massive,
climbable, honeycomb.
[Hudson Yards is a real estate
development on the far West Side of Midtown Manhattan, built over a functioning
rail yard, a storage yard for Long Island Rail Road trains. The 28-acre site includes,
aside from The Shed and the Vessel, a landscaped public plaza, high-rises with both residential apartments and corporate offices, and a seven-story mall with shops
and restaurants. Most of the offerings are strictly high-end.]
Colbert: We have to take a quick break, but we will
be right back with more Tom Hanks, everybody. Stick around.
. . . .
Colbert: Hey, everybody, we are back with the star of
This World of Tomorrow at The Shed, Mr. Tom Hanks.
Tell the people what it’s about, if you don’t mind.
Hanks: it’s from a collection of short stories. Jim
Glossman – I published some short stories. And Jim Glossman said we could
string these together under the theme of – let’s just say time travel.
It’s about a guy who decides to – a franchise out of what is
now the Milford Plaza Hotel.
[Renamed the Row NYC in
2014, the Milford Plaza Hotel (at 700 Eighth Avenue, between 44th and 45th
Streets, in Midtown Manhattan) opened in 1928 as the Hotel Lincoln. It changed
hands many times, and was renamed by each new owner. In 1956, it became the
Hotel Manhattan; in 1969, it operated as the Royal Manhattan; and it reopened
in 1980 as the Milford Plaza Hotel.
[Somewhat typical of the
reviews the hotel received over its lifetime, New York magazine said
in 2022 that “the reason most people stay here is location; its proximity to
the city’s brightest [Broadway theater] marquees ensures theatergoers can be in
bed shortly after the curtain drops. Otherwise, the 1,300 rooms are slightly
antiquated."]
You may not know this. The Milford Plaza Hotel used to be
the Lincoln Hotel and it’s at Eighth Avenue and West 45th Street, and Room 1114
has what is called volume authenticity to allow access to a 12-hour time-bond
echo to June 8th, 1939.
[I tried to decipher what
Hanks is saying here, thinking he’s using standard or recognized mainstream
science fiction terms. According to one source, he isn’t. He’s using terms like
“volume authenticity” and “time-bond echo” as technobabble—invented scientific
language—to explain the mechanics of his character’s time travel.
[“Volume authenticity” is a
fictional scientific requirement in the play. It refers to the idea that for a “time
jump” to work, the physical space (i.e., Room 1114 of the Milford Plaza) must
perfectly match the historical details of the destination date. The more “authentic”
the room’s physical “volume” (decor, smell, newspapers, and atmosphere) is to
1939, the easier it is to “tether” to that time.
[“Time-Bond Echo” is the play’s
term for the actual window or “link” between two points in time. It describes a
temporary connection (a bond) that allows someone from 2089, the play’s
“present,” to interact with the “echo” of 8 June 1939.
[In the play, there is also a 12-hour
limit for Bert Allenberry’s (Hanks) technology to allow him to access this “echo”
before he is pulled back to his own time, which is why he must keep returning “again
and again” to the same day to see the woman he loves (Kelli O’Hara).]
So you can go back to the World’s Fair on June 8th, 1939.
And I play a fellow who does that again and again and again, because he just
cannot get enough of the World’s Fair.
Now – this is a game around the dinner table. I’m gonna tell
you right now, okay – here’s the rules of the game. You get to go to any time in the past you want to for 12 hours. Name the place, name the event. However,
homicide is not allowed. You can’t go back and – you know.
Colbert: April 1865, Ford’s Theatre and I prevent a
homicide. Is that legal?
[laughter and applause
from the audience.]
[President Abraham Lincoln (b.
1809; 16th President of the United States: 1861-1865) was assassinated by actor
John Wilkes Booth (1838-65) on 14 April 1865 as he and the First Lady, Mary
Todd Lincoln (1818-82), were attending a performance of Our American Cousin,
an 1852 farce by English playwright Tom Taylor, at Ford’s Theatre in
Washington, D.C.
[Ford’s Theatre ceased
presenting plays for 103 years after Lincoln’s death. It became a museum
dedicated to Lincoln until 1968, when it was restored and reopened. The
presidential box remains as it was in the 1860s, but is never occupied. Since its
reopening, the theater has not restaged Our American Cousin, and has
said that it never will out of respect for the assassination.
[(This vow is attributed to Secretary
of the Interior Stewart Udall (1920-2010; in office: 1961-69), whose department
includes the National Park Service, which is responsible for the physical
stewardship, preservation, and historical interpretation of the Ford’s Theatre
National Historic Site, which includes the government-owned theater building.
The non-profit Ford’s Theatre Society oversees the site’s artistic programming
and educational initiatives.)]
Hanks: Here’s the problem with that. I believe that
show was sold out.
Colbert: So I cannot get a ticket.
Hanks: And those laws [are] adhered to. You don’t
just get to appear magically. You have to eat the food and go to the bathroom
and take a shower – and if you break a leg, you’ll have a broken leg.
So those are the rules. But the fellow I play cannot stop
from going back to 1939, for reasons that are evident once you come see the
play.
Colbert: That is the World’s Fair, 1939. Did you have
a particular fascination with the World’s Fair?
Hanks: Something about the World’s Fair.
Here’s a question. There was a line from the “Futurama,”
which was the most attended attraction at the fair, run by our good friends at
General Motors.
Colbert: Cars of the future.
Hanks: It was 1939, showing you what 1960 was going
to be like and it had this fabulous line that said: “The present is but an
instant between an infinite past and a hurrying future.” And if you think about
it, that’s a great theme that Jim Glossman and I’d been working on.
[The General Motors exhibit at
the 1939 New York World’s Fair was titled “Highways and Horizons.” The core
attraction and most popular attraction at the fair was a massive, immersive
diorama and ride called “Futurama.” Designed by theatrical and industrial
designer Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), the exhibit presented an idealized
model of the world 20 years into the future (around 1960), characterized by
vast suburbs and extensive, automated highway systems.
[Visitors sat in moving,
sound-equipped chairs that conveyed them over a massive, 35,000 square-foot
scale model of the American countryside and cities. The Futurama exhibit fit
closely with the fair’s overall theme of “The World of Tomorrow” and is
credited with popularizing the concept of modern interstate highways.]
You cannot do anything about our infinite past. That’s gone,
baby, gone, right? And the future’s going down the pike. Who knows
what’s gonna go happen [sic]?
But the present, we have a little bit of control over that,
don’t we? And we also know what you’re hurrying future’s going to be, don’t we
[a reference to Paramount’s cancellation of The Late Show after May
2026]. And you can’t do nothin’ ’bout the things that got you in trouble, my
friend.
So you’re just going to have to make hay right here, right
now.
Colbert: Exactly.
Hanks: That’s right.
. . . .
Colbert: We have to take another break here, but
stick around. We will be right back with more Tom Hanks, everybody.
. . . .
Colbert: Hey, everybody! We’re back with the star of This
World of Tomorrow, Mr. Thomas Hanks.
You’ve done lots of theater.
Hanks: I’ve done just enough, sir, to call myself a
professional actor.
Colbert: And last time you were live on stage here in
New York, it was 2013.
Hanks: Yes, we did Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy at
the Broadhurst Theatre – yes.
Colbert: Now you’re back
at The Shed, and we know where that is.
Hanks: Where’s The Shed again? Well, I’ll tell you
where it is. It’s –
[chants as the band
comes in.]
By the Vessel
And the High Line.
Colbert: Is it different to go on stage knowing that
you wrote it?
Hanks: Yes, it is. Number one, because they are going
to have a real hard time firing me. If I screw up.
Colbert: Have you gone up on your own line?
[In theater, ‘to go up’ means
to forget one’s lines on stage during a performance or rehearsal.]
Hanks: Oh, God, yeah, year. I disappeared the other
night, as a matter of fact. And when it happens, Kelli O’Hara on stage, or
Ruben Santiago-Hudson – they all just kind of look at me and go, ‘Come on,
Man.’
Colbert: If you don’t know it –
Hanks: ‘If I learn my lines – You haven’t – [why]
haven’t you learned yours?’
The huge difference between film and stage is, in film, the
director is the governor of the story. He can change it, not say it, don’t say
that, don’t say this.
On the stage, if it’s not on the page, it is not on the
stage. The writers are the definitive arbiters of what is being said.
So, on one hand, you have a discussion. ‘What – what sounds
better: “Hey, guys, we better get going because we have a problem,” or, “Hey,
guys, we better get going because we have a situation”’?
We had some previews the other night. Kenny Leon said when
we’re in rehearsal, the play is ours; when we are performing, the play is
theirs. Meaning, that audience gives you something that is just undeniable. And
we were out there and we had a difference between blah-blah-blah-blah problem
– and the audience was like hmm [making
a hand gesture indicating “flat”] – blah-blah-blah-blah situation,
and they go, ‘Oh, a situation?’ And this is where you start playing
around with it. It’s a very, very malleable, exciting thing.
And being one of the cowriters is just a pleasure and a joy,
but it is also as terrifying an experience as I have ever had.
Colbert: Why terrifying?
Hanks: Well, because you just wake up and –
‘problem,’ ‘situation,’ ‘problem,’ ‘situation’ [making
hand gesture of weighing two alternatives].
And will they know how to find us. You know how they find us
– well,
[chants and snaps his
fingers.]
By the Vessel
Off the High Line
Is The Shed
In Hudson Yards.
Colbert: We’re gonna take another break here.
Hanks: I think we should.
Colbert: We’ll be right back with more Tom Hanks,
everybody.
. . . .
Colbert: Hey, everybody. You know who that is, that’s Tom Hanks.
. . . .
Colbert: So, Tom – wonderful to see you, as always.
Hanks: Thank you so much.
This World of Tomorrow is currently in previews at
The Shed [30 October-18 November 2025]. And where’s The Shed?
Hanks: I will tell you right now, The Shed is . . .
[chants]
By the Vessel
Off the High Line
Is The Shed
In Hudson Yards.
By the Vessel
In the High Line
Colbert: Officially opens November 18th.
Hanks:
[continues]
This World of Tomorrow
Is a play you all can see
Where? At The Shed
By the Vessel
Off the High Line
In Hudson Yards.
Colbert: Tom Hanks, everybody.
We’ll be right back with a performance by Mavis Staples.
* *
* *
TWO REVIEWS OF THIS WORLD OF TOMORROW
“THE WORLD OF
TOMORROW REVIEW –
TOM HANKS RETURNS
TO THE STAGE
FOR TIME TRAVEL CHARMER”
by Benjamin Lee
[Of the two reviews of This World of Tomorrow I selected to repost, the one
from The
Guardian of 18 November 2025 was the more positive. The critical reception of the play was mixed,
most giving some form of praise for the performances accompanied, but less enthusiasm,
as you’ll read in the second example, for the production (that is, directing
and design) and the script.]
The actor indulges his love of the past in a breezily
enjoyable play about a man falling for a woman from the 1930s, played by a
standout Kelli O’Hara
Tom
Hanks [b. 1956] is a star who’s always had one foot squarely in the
past. As an actor he’s forever been likened to James Stewart [1908-97;
years active: 1932-91], a reincarnation of the charming, essentially good
American everyman, a from-another-era lead who’s increasingly been more
comfortable in period fare (in the last decade, he’s appeared in just four
present-day films [see note below]). As a producer, he’s gravitated toward
historical shows such as Band of Brothers [2001; HBO], John Adams [2008; HBO]
and The Pacific [2010; HBO] his directorial debut was 60s-set music comedy That
Thing You Do! [1996; Twentieth Century Fox] and his undying obsession, outside
of acting, is the typewriter, collecting and writing about its throwback
appeal.
[Between 2015 and 2025, Hanks’s
“present-day” films (out of 19 productions, including the animated Toy Story
4) have been A Hologram for the King (made in 2016, set in 2010;
Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions, Saban Films), Sully (made in 2016, set
in 2009; Warner Bros. Pictures), Inferno (made and set in 2016; Sony Pictures
Releasing), and A Man Called Otto (made in 2020, set in 2020 – with flashbacks
to 1960s and mid-2010s; Sony Pictures Releasing).]
In his new play, The World of Tomorrow [sic], his
fondness for the “good old days” has led to the inevitable, a story about a man
with a fondness for the “good old days” who actually gets to experience one of
them for himself. It’s a loosely familiar tale of time travel, based on a short
story written by Hanks that tries, and half-succeeds, to bring something new to
a table we’ve sat at many times before.
[Several press outlets mislabel
the play by substituting ‘The’ for ‘This.’
As I note in Part 1, the play’s title, This World of Tomorrow,
is distinct from the official motto and theme of the 1939 World’s Fair, which
was “The World of Tomorrow.” The
choice by Hanks and Glossman was deliberate to distinguish their creative work
from the historical event it depicts and to shift the focus from a broad,
corporate vision of the future to a specific, personal reality experienced by
the characters.]
The gimmick here is that while time travel might be possible
in the future, it comes with hard restrictions. Firstly, it’s prohibitively
expensive, leaving it up to the select few to take advantage (asides about the
state of the world in 60 years time are . . . not optimistic). Secondly, it’s
only possible to go back to specific places at specific times, reliant on
certain spaces remaining the same and certain “echoes” allowing for movement.
Hanks plays Bert, a scientist whose trips to the 1939 world fair in New York
become more frequent after he meets Carmen (Kelli O’Hara), a local woman
treating herself to a day off with her precocious niece (Kayli Carter, a
32-year-old actor fighting a losing, and increasingly grating, battle playing
an 11-year-old).
It’s not just love at first sight that keeps him going back,
it’s also his fetish for nostalgia (Newspapers! Lower prices! People saying
“swell”!) and the alluring promise of a future that never really came. Each
time he returns to the present, after a strict cutoff of 11pm [sic], he
regales his skeptical colleagues with ideas of how to forge ahead differently.
While whimsy is mostly prioritized [sic – British spelling], the dark
shadow of reality often threatens to intrude. Bert’s fawning over the past is
briefly interrupted when Black colleague and longtime friend M-Dash (played by
the wonderful Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who tries hard to add weight to a lightly
written dynamic) tells him that the idea of travelling back is less appealing
for him, a sharp reminder that the good old days weren’t that good for many
people (as he predicts, almost all of the service jobs during Bert’s visits are
taken on by Black workers). It’s also the summer of 1939, just weeks away from
the second world war [German troops invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, marking
the start of World War II in Europe], and Nazism has already started to appear
in the US, the dreaded swastika showing up on pin badges.
But Hanks, as ever, chooses light over dark and his focus,
with co-writer James Glossman, is the thrill of an impossible romance, a choice
that takes a little time to convince (the setup, like in his classic romcoms
Sleepless in Seattle [1993; TriStar Pictures] and You’ve Got Mail [1998; Warner
Bros.], could have easily warped into a creepy thriller). Before intermission,
it’s hard to fully understand why Bert would make the expensive, and
increasingly dangerous, choice to keep going back for Carmen, as effervescent
as O’Hara might be (like many an adaptation, the writing often suffers without
the gap-filling depth of a narrator).
Yet in a far superior second half, after she’s gifted with a
piercing monologue, we’re whisked along with them. Visually, the journey is
smooth throughout thanks to Tony-winning director Kenny Leon guiding the way.
While his recent take on Othello [2025; Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway; see “Film
Stars Twinkle on the Great White Way, Part 1” (27 March 2025)] might have underwhelmed on
many levels, his decisions here are far more astute, working with what
seems like another blockbuster budget but this time allowed to spend it on more
than just A-list casting. The stage is filled with rectangular pillars
switching between various video-screened backgrounds, from a futuristic
conference room to a pokey Bronx apartment, and despite one hiccup (a prop that
wouldn’t budge that Hanks himself helped to save), it felt as sleekly
transporting as something the actor would have made for the big screen. Its commerciality
does also make it an easy fit for a Hollywood transfer, perhaps one that could
easily tighten the script, excising the scene-sinking niece and some extraneous
diner and home scenes (it’s over two hours and could benefit from being under).
Hanks, who was last on the New York stage in Nora Ephron’s
80s-set newsroom drama Lucky Guy, develops real last-act chemistry with O’Hara,
who manages to perfect period intonation without becoming schtick-y. He’s
comfortably in his wheelhouse here (also nailing the delivery as expected), but
there’s none of the autopilot laziness we often get from actors known for
sticking to certain character types. He might be stuck in the past, but it’s
hard not to get stuck there with him.
[Benjamin Lee is the east
coast arts editor at Guardian US,
based in New York. He was previously deputy
editor of the style and culture website ShortList.com.]
* *
* *
“DAWN OF A DULL
DAY:
TOM HANKS IN THIS
WORLD OF TOMORROW”
by Jackson McHenry
[The review on Vulture
(the online platform of New York magazine) that was posted on 18 November
2025 was a largely negative assessment of the Hanks-Glossman play. As you’ll read, reviewer Jackson McHenry had
numerous objections to This World of Tomorrow, both to the script and Kenny
Leon’s production.]
Whatever is happening at the Shed right now, it’s not really
a play. It’s play-shaped, and actors put on costumes and wander around onstage
for a couple of hours, repeating words they’ve memorized. But I’d be more
comfortable calling the staging of This World of Tomorrow — starring
Tom Hanks, written by Hanks and his collaborator James Glossman, directed by
Kenny Leon, and based off elements of Hanks’s short-story collection, Uncommon
Type — something more along the lines of “a flight of fancy,”
“a doodle on a napkin,” or “a college-drama-club project with the express
purpose of making one person happy.” 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’t factor into the
equation. This thing is entirely about admiring its star. Hey, at least there
are some fun hats.
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’m 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.) 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 “The Past Is Important
to Us,” 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’s Fair
via a company called Chronometric Adventures. He justifies the cost by telling
his colleagues that he’s enthralled by the way the past imagined a better
future than the one we got, but it becomes clear very quickly that he’s really
doing it because he’s infatuated with a winsome divorcée named Carmen Perry
(Kelli O’Hara, 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 “loud”), and Hanks runs into her by accident,
then comes back again and again. In each time loop, Carmen doesn’t remember
Bert, he so [sic] keeps reseducing her, using a little more information
each time, an unsettling dynamic that’s a blend between Groundhog Day [1993;
directed by Harold Ramis; Columbia Pictures], Midnight in Paris [2011;
directed by Woody Allen; Sony Pictures Classics], and maybe even the deranged sci-fi drama Passengers [2016; directed by Morten Tyldum; Sony
Pictures Releasing], all films that aren’t known for their sensitivity toward
women’s agency.
There’s 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’s 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’t do much of
what you might expect. There’s little tension anywhere or really any
significant attempt to undercut Bert’s rosy gaze on the past. Hanks and
Glossman have written a few throwaway lines that acknowledge the racism of the
1930s — Black members of the ensemble are often called upon to roll their eyes
at Bert’s cheeriness about 1939 — and in the play’s announcement, Alex Poots,
the Shed’s artistic director, told the New
York Times [see Part
1] that “there is reference to the rise in authoritarianism,” which I can
translate as “there is a line about how Bert should have used time travel to
kill Hitler.”
I wouldn’t say that This World of Tomorrow embraces
Bert’s 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 drama,
hasn’t pushed his cast toward any specific idea. (According to a conversation
in your program, Leon said the play is about “time and love”; one is a concept
an actor can’t 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’s design resembles a cybernetic wilderness, a spare
set of moving columns that indicate new locations and settings through screens
and projections. If Bert’s so enamored with the innovations of the World’s
Fair, couldn’t we see re-creations of a few of them onstage? Why not show us
the famous
robot or the celebrity
cow?
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’s colleagues from the future throw nonsense
time-travel-related nouns around while wearing Star Trek outfits.
I couldn’t care less about the acids that supposedly accumulate when you go
back and forth in time. The script’s 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’re watching a real play about a real man, commanding the stage
with a gruff bark and mining humor from his character’s insistence on teaching
everyone Greek vocabulary as he picks up some English. I’m 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 — perhaps his wife, the Greek American actress
and producer Rita
Wilson, had his ear — but at least it’s an interestingly idiosyncratic gesture.
Yet the audience isn’t at the Shed for idiosyncrasies. Hanks
is the be-all and end-all of This World of Tomorrow, and, sure,
when you’re sitting in the audience a few dozen yards away from him, it’s 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’s hard to judge Hanks’s strengths as a stage actor given that this script
gives him so few challenges, but when he delivers several jokes about Bert’s
discovery that they have real milk at the World’s Fair — presumably, an
unspoken environmental collapse has eliminated dairy — he is deeply charming.
In those moments, the audience lets out a sigh of relief, as if to say, Ah,
yes, the celebrity we’re here to see is giving us the performance we wanted.
It’s his own persona he’s performing, not a character. We come to see plenty of
stage actors for a taste of their familiar forms, from Kristin
Chenoweth to Laurie
Metcalf, but perhaps putting a movie star onstage and asking them to
actually perform in a play is an extra hurdle we needn’t 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 — or its own act of
sacramental theater. He’s not performing, after all. You are.
[Jackson McHenry is a Vulture critic covering theater, film, and TV. He’s been covering theater, film, and
television since 2015, with a focus on arts and entertainment, pop culture, and
cultural movements. In addition to Vulture,
Jackson’s work has been featured in Variety, Magzter, and Entertainment Weekly.]
