The text travels with the leading partnership
Tom Hanks and Kelli O’Hara’s announced Broadway reunion in This World of Tomorrow carries forward a stage partnership from last year’s run at The Shed, the New York arts center. Both performed in that Off Broadway production. Hanks last appeared on Broadway in Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy in 2013, earning a Tony nomination. The production history gives his return a specific theatrical interest: the announced leads have already worked together in this play. Their shared connection to the material supplies a starting point for the Broadway company, beyond the attraction of an individual name.[1]
Hanks is adapting his own short stories with James Glossman, while Kenny Leon directs the production. Continuity in the leads therefore sits alongside work on the text and the direction. Hanks occupies both the writing and acting sides of the project; O’Hara’s acting and Leon’s direction remain distinct contributions to the encounter between story and audience. That distribution of work is a useful way into the transfer. It gives attention to the company around the writer-performer, without turning his familiarity with the stories into an assumed judgment about the acting. Broadway is receiving a project with an announced leading partnership and director.[1]
Returning to the same day
The production’s synopsis begins at the end of the 21st century. Bert Allenberry tries to change his future by returning repeatedly to a particular day at the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Queens. Decisions made for love sit at the center of that time-travel premise. For the stage, returning to one day creates a practical dramatic question: how does an audience recognize the same moment, and follow a changed choice within it? The relationship between repeated time in the story and a choice played in the present is the theatrical point of interest. The announced plot supplies that question; judgments about rhythm, transitions and the actors’ responses require a performance.[1]
A Shubert theatre is planned for the Broadway engagement, but the house and complete cast and creative team remain unannounced. Those open details limit any firm account of the conditions of the new staging. For an audience, the concrete connection is Hanks and O’Hara returning to material they performed together at The Shed, with Leon continuing the directing work. Reaching more spectators is the director’s stated ambition in the announcement. The production’s promise of love and second chances takes its theatrical measure in the performance the company plays.[1]