The world premiere of This World of Tomorrow starring Academy Award winner Tom Hanks and Tony Award winner Kelli O’Hara is now running Off-Broadway at The Shed at Hudson Yards. Read reviews for the production!
This new play is written by Tom Hanks and James Glossman, based on short stories written by Tom Hanks, and directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.
Previews for This World of Tomorrow begin tonight, October 30 in The Shed’s Griffin Theater. The production officially opens on November 18.
This World of Tomorrow tells the story of Bert Allenberry, a forlorn scientist from the future, who embarks on a time-traveling quest for true love as he returns again, and again, and again to one special day at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York.
Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times: The play’s futuristic framework notwithstanding, and despite the distinct “Groundhog Day” element to its conceit, connoisseurs of Nora Ephron’s movie “You’ve Got Mail” will detect several echoes of that classic here. Not because of any writerly pilfering but mainly because Hanks, who made his Broadway debut a dozen years ago in a posthumous production of Ephron’s “Lucky Guy,” is the one speaking the lines.
Jackson McHenry, Vulture: 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.
Robert Hofler, The Wrap: The humor depends entirely on 20-20 hindsight. The scientist, the divorcee and her obnoxious niece (Kayli Carter, being obnoxious) visit a fair exhibition that predicts what the world will be in the year 1960. They all receive an “I Saw the Future” button. No surprise, the scientist knows what’s really going to happen, and his oblique but spot-on remarks about the future provoke mild giggles of recognition from the audience.
Matthew Wexler, One-Minute Critic: Director Kenny Leon, who has recently had a string of Broadway hits, pulls out all the stops to keep this time-traveling misfire in the right galaxy. Even with brisk pacing and seamless scenic and projection design by Derek McLane, the play spins out of orbit, unable to connect its multiverse themes with the intimate relationship at its core.
Brian Scott Lipton, Cititour: Does it really help to know what the future will bring? And if you do know, should you do what you can to change it? That turns out to be both a question on many people’s minds right now, for both political and practical reasons. It’s also the philosophical debate at the heart of Tom Hanks and James Grossman’s whimsical yet frustrating play “This World of Tomorrow,” now at The Shed under Kenny Leon’s solid direction.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Director Kenny Leon does what he can to tighten the pacing, but the script needs significant work to trim unnecessary scenes and sharpen the focus. Despite the sci-fi trappings, This World of Tomorrow is stuck in the dusty past, a time dripping in sentimentality and the possibility of a whirlwind romance with a person you only just met.
Benjamin Lee, The Guardian: In his new play, The World of Tomorrow, 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.
Chris Jones, The New York Daily News: And, as one always obsessed by the road not travelled, I enjoyed those themes, too. “This World of Tomorrow” clearly wants to avoid sentimentality but let’s be real. It trafficks in nostalgia, not least because there is so much now not to like.
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: I would feel churlish offering a lengthy catalogue of all the ways the play falls short as a work of contemporary theater; it seems largely beside the point. The production offers the rare thrill not only of watching this beloved movie star in person, but of seeing something of his that feels almost homespun.
Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: Hanks, who starred in Nora Ephron’s play Lucky Guy on Broadway in 2013, is very comfortable onstage. Still, we can’t shake the feeling that This World of Tomorrow would be better off as a movie. (Groundhog Day, Time and Again—you get the drift.) Or as a book, where the characters could get more attention. That’s where it all started: Hanks and Glossman based the play on three short stories from Hanks’ 2017 collection Uncommon Type. We leave the show wanting more of Bert and Carmen’s story…where do they go from here?
Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: It’s still fun to watch. How could it not be, with Hanks and O’Hara onstage? But the convoluted storyline — reminiscent of such time-travel stories as the film Somewhere in Time and the classic Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever — never fully comes to life.
Allison Considine, New York Theatre Guide: It’s not often that an Academy Award-winning actor takes to the stage — let alone co-writes a play to star in — but Tom Hanks does so with aplomb in This World of Tomorrow. Hanks lends his extraordinary storytelling talent to Bert Allenberry, a scientist from 2089 who travels back in time to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York.
Average Rating:
56.7%
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