NEW YORK — A good chunk of the audience at The Shed clearly didn’t recognize Tom Hanks when he first walked out on stage in “This World of Tomorrow,” even though Tom Hanks was who people had come to see. And hear. Hanks wrote this play himself, along with a collaborator, James Glossman; it’s an adaptation of several of Hanks’ short stories.
Who knew he had the time?
Movie stars who were famous while young often appear older in person, and, on this occasion, Hanks’ famously chunky and friendly forehead seemed to have shrunk or maybe it was just covered up by hair and make-up. The idea, clearly, was to make Hanks seem like a regular Joe, a regular retro Joe, with manners more at home in 1939 than whatever dystopian, artificial intelligence-run fate awaits us all later this century.
That is pretty much the plot of “This World of Tomorrow,” a play directed by Kenny Leon that would more aptly be titled, “This World of Yesterday.”
Hanks’ Bert Allenberry, a character name right out of Frank Capra, works for some high-tech outfit in Kansas that has figured out how to send people back in time for short visits (stay too long and you have issues). Inclined toward self-exploration and figuring that knowing more about the past can answer questions he has about his future, Bert goes on such a trip. He lands back at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, New York.
There, he runs into a very charming working-class woman named Carmen (Kelli O’Hara), who has been less than lucky in marriage but is enjoying a day at the fair with her spunky young niece, Virginia (Kayli Carter).
Bert has such a great time in 1939 Queens with O’Hara’s Carmen that he plans a return visit, meeting Carmen at a Greek restaurant (Jay O. Sanders plays the owner) and finding, well, that the past, with all its flaws noted, still might well be better than the future.
Of all the American actors, few are as empathetic as Hanks, a highly skilled stage and screen artist who has sufficiently curated his roles across the decades to become the closest living equivalent to Jimmy Stewart, someone whose inherent goodness and kindness seem to arrive five minutes before the man himself. He’s humble, emotionally accessible, guileless, all the feels, really, and in this play, he is playing a man who much resembles what we associate with him. Its power to charm should never be underestimated.
“This World of Tomorrow,” though, is a bit of a weird compilation of stories and although I was with it pretty much all the way in Act 1, things go awry in Act 2, as the narrative runs more into the usual problem with time-travel stories, which is how the act of going back impacts what either has newly occurred or not. (Fans of “Back to the Future,” which got it right, will know what I am talking about here). Some things start to feel repetitive and disconnected and not everything makes sense.
Still, you will not be surprised to know that Hanks and O’Hara (actually, also Carter) are quite charming together, and my mind wandered to what perhaps was an unintended theme here: how, in 1939, companies on the technological cutting edge got buy-in from ordinary people by giving them a really cool, non-threatening experience, EPCOT-style. You don’t see that so much anymore. We could use another World’s Fair, full of wonders, before the wonders themselves render us all obsolete.
This is a simmer of a piece of theater overall, rather than a fast boil, and the burners go out from time to time. But it’s a warm experience as the weather chills.
And, as one always obsessed by the road not traveled, I enjoyed those themes, too. “This World of Tomorrow” clearly wants to avoid sentimentality, but let’s be real. It traffics in nostalgia, not least because there is so much now not to like.
At The Shed in Hudson Yards at 545 W. 30th St., New York; www.theshed.org
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com