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 i

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