Review: Tom Hanks and Kelli O’Hara Fall in Love Over Time in This World of Tomorrow

There was a time when technology seemed like the answer to all human problems, when inventions like television were going to make our lives immeasurably better. Nowadays, with the advent of AI, we’ve tempered our excitement somewhat and become apprehensive that our toasters might outsmart us someday and take over the world.

Whether you believe that or not, you may harbor the same nostalgia for techno-optimism that sits at the heart of This World of Tomorrow, directed by Kenny Leon and written by Tom Hanks (from his short stories) and James Glossman.

For me, one of the things going for this play is that it’s science-fiction—a genre ready and waiting for more onstage exploration (Maybe Happy Ending and Marjorie Prime prove it can be done well). Another is that it has two beloved stars, Hanks and Kelli O’Hara, leading the cast in a highly anticipated world premiere.

Alas, charming as it often is, This World of Tomorrow feels very yesterday. It traffics in familiar rom-com tropes that we’ve seen in the likes of Groundhog Day and space-time-continuum high jinks like in Back to the Future—which would all be fine if it managed to make those old chestnuts new.

Instead, it gets muddled in fuzzy scientific rigamarole and explanations of time travel that stretch out the run time to an eyelid-drooping two hours and 15 minutes. Hanks and O’Hara have decent enough chemistry between them, but the problem with this play is its physics.

Hanks plays Bert Allenberry, a time-traveling scientist living in the year 2089 who longs for simpler days when people drank cow milk and paid a nickel for a cup of coffee. He time-warps back to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens where he meets Carmen Perry (O’Hara, classy even with a thick Bronx accent) and her spunky niece, Virginia (Kayli Carter convincingly playing an 11-year-old). Time travel has nasty side effects, though, so he has to decide whether staying with Carmen is worth risking his life.

It’s a love story, so of course it is. Unfortunately, the stakes are never really that high because of a convenient plot twist that eliminates all sense of real danger for Bert. Is the mysterious Trillic Acid, one of the play’s more embarrassing attempts at science, just another name for “love”?

That’s one of the head-scratchers you’ll come across if you ponder the story long enough, but it’s better to focus on the performances. O’Hara, wearing an unassuming pre-war dress (costumes by Dede Ayite), makes us feel for the divorcée Carmen, who was abandoned by her first husband and has gone to live with her brother, Max (Jay O. Sanders, reliably gruff and voluminously wigged by J. Jared Janas). Carter is a sheer delight as the cheeky Virginia, who loves to crack wise with her aunt.

Unfortunately, the dialogue between them often makes even this fun relationship tedious, with Carmen constantly correcting Virginia’s grammar and the two breaking into Jimmy Cagney impressions ad nauseam. If the joke isn’t funny the first time, it won’t be funny the fourth.

Hanks’s capable but anodyne performance gets an occasional laugh with the help of his supporting cast. Ruben Santiago-Hudson plays worrisome fellow scientist M-Dash with frustrated intensity while Jamie Ann Romero gets chuckles spewing Wikipedia entries as the life-size AI bot ELMA.

It’s telling that one of the standout performances of the production is by Donald Webber Jr., who plays, among other roles, a sweeper. In a short, graceful dance sequence that has no relation to the plot whatsoever, Webber allows us to forget the play taking place around him, and for a moment it feels as though we’ve dreamily time-skipped into a Gene Kelly movie.

The Shed’s vast stage contains a forest of tall square columns designed by Derek McLane, who has created lovely projections that shift the scene from a futuristic lab building to a 1930s Greek diner at the speed of light, while Justin Ellington’s rainy-day sound design and Adam Honoré’s shadowy lighting effectively create a deluge in the play’s final scene. Impressive as all these technological stage effects are, This World of Tomorrow never lets us feel all that much for a couple we’re ready to love. In the end, their story is more head than heart.