It\u2019s not surprising that a famous actor, best known for his many screen performances, would write a play that\u2019s really a screenplay.<\/p>\n
What is surprising is how much that play resembles a movie \u2026 from the 1940s. Tom Hanks<\/a> and James Grossman\u2019s \u201cThis World of Tomorrow,\u201d based on short stories by Hanks, opened Tuesday at The Shed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n A disillusioned scientist (Hanks) from the future travels back to 1939 to visit the World\u2019s Fair in New York City. There, he meets a divorcee (Kelli O\u2019Hara, being utterly charming) and they fall in love over the course of several more visits to the fair, as well as a Greek diner in 1953. The story is so retro it\u2019s new. Nothing else has been seen like this sweet exercise in nostalgia on the stage in years. In comparison, any Disney musical would appear to throw off shades of Kafka. \u201cThis World of Tomorrow\u201d is real Frank Capra corn. Whether or not it\u2019s very good Capra corn, that depends on how many bags of sugar you require for your morning coffee. Even Capra made a few clunkers.<\/p>\n Playing the scientist, Hanks channels his inner Jimmy Stewart from Capra classics like \u201cMr. Smith Goes to Washington\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life.\u201d The much darker James Stewart of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s films never dares show his face in this two-hour 15-minute time-travel fantasy.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cI Saw the Future\u201d button. No surprise, the scientist knows what\u2019s really going to happen, and his oblique but spot-on remarks about the future provoke mild giggles of recognition from the audience.<\/p>\n Kenny Leon directs.<\/p>\n The post \u2018This World of Tomorrow\u2019 Off Broadway Review: Tom Hanks Makes \u2019em Like They Used To<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not surprising that a famous actor, best known for his many screen performances, would write a play that\u2019s really a screenplay. What is surprising is how much that play resembles a movie \u2026 from the 1940s. Tom Hanks and James Grossman\u2019s \u201cThis World of Tomorrow,\u201d based on short stories by Hanks, opened Tuesday at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2143131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[383807,415835,341426,415836,306358,415837],"class_list":["post-2165785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-frank-capra","tag-kayli-carter","tag-kelli-ohara","tag-marc-j-franklin","tag-tom-hanks","tag-world-of-tomorrow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7-Movies-You-Didnt-Know-Were-Adapted-From-Stephen-King.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2165785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165786,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165785\/revisions\/2165786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2143131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2165785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2165785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2165785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n