To constitute “Tomorrow,” Hanks and Glossman adapted respective of Hanks’s ain abbreviated stories, chiefly “The Past Is Important to Us,” which helium had agelong hoped mightiness go a movie. Much of the occupation stems from disorder astir however a signifier substance needs to disagree from a screenplay—in the fig of locations, the allocation of secondary characters, and truthful on. And, frankly, Bert conscionable isn’t a bully capable portion for Hanks. Ever since my day astatine the Shed, I’ve been mentally casting him elsewhere. We should spot his Stage Manager successful “Our Town.” Or his Willy Loman.
I bash urge that abbreviated story, though, which provides immoderate penetration into the unusual disjunctions of “Tomorrow.” It makes wide that billionaire Bert is simply a billionaire cad and that he’s concealing the crushed for his trips from Cyndee—in the story, she’s his wife, the “fourth and youngest.” Bert’s abrupt involvement successful Carmen seems similar an intoxication with a shiny caller thing, mirrored by the mode the World’s Fair really operates arsenic a pageant of commodities. In casting the palpably lovable and decent Hanks, the squad had to pivot to a Bert who’s besides lovable and decent, but a whiff of that selfish ur-Bert from the communicative remains. “Their Future then was amended than our Present is close now,” Bert tells M-Dash, which is simply a heck of a happening to accidental astir radical successful 1939. But Bert’s got a miss to woo, and truthful the world—this poor, mediocre world—will person to instrumentality attraction of itself.
There’s thing astir Oedipal astir the devotion that definite men person to women from the past. Is it notable that Bert is falling successful emotion with a pistillate of a erstwhile generation? What an undemanding phantasy Carmen is: an old-fashioned Greatest Generation stoic who’s besides young and has ne'er heard of women’s lib. What would Freud accidental astir specified a relationship? It’s a puzzle. How lucky, then, that we tin consult the parent of each specified May-December romances, present that this fall’s biggest transportation from the West End has arrived astatine Studio 54.
In Robert Icke’s crackling “Oedipus,” the director’s rewrite of Sophocles’ large tragedy, the bones stay the same: a prophecy tells Oedipus (Mark Strong), who seems to beryllium a antheral of astir boundless bully fortune, that helium has unknowingly killed his begetter and slept with his mother. In Icke’s modern version, Oedipus is simply a campaigner connected Election Night, connected tenterhooks arsenic promising results determination in. Throughout, Icke ramps up the erotic vigor betwixt Oedipus and his queen—here governmental wife—Jocasta (Lesley Manville), adjacent a small past the constituent of the romance-killing revelation that she’s his mum. (You tin bargain merch successful the lobby that says “Truth Is a Motherfucker,” successful lawsuit you were worrying astir spoilers.)
Oedipus’ nox horribilis takes spot successful his run headquarters—a bid of impersonal achromatic league rooms designed by Hildegard Bechtler—as black-clad movers cleanable it retired for the adjacent tenant. (Icke draws attraction to tragedy’s cyclical nature; each ending is simply a opening is an ending.) As the signifier empties, Oedipus’ household gathers to instrumentality his caput disconnected the ballot returns: his woman makes jokes astir being astir thirteen years older than helium is; his girl Antigone (Olivia Reis) brings her college-philosophy textbook with her, and she and her uncle Creon (John Carroll Lynch) sermon the riddle of the Sphinx; and Oedipus’ evident mother, Merope (a stunning Anne Reid), keeps badgering him for a word, disquieted astir his last-minute run committedness to uncover his commencement certificate.
Meanwhile, a countdown timepiece successful the inheritance ticks toward the instant erstwhile the votes volition beryllium tabulated. In a marvellous spot of directorial peacocking, astatine the precise infinitesimal the timepiece hits 00:00:00, Oedipus yet learns everything helium needs to know.
Strong, whose big-hearted Oedipus flashes into aggrieved petulance whenever helium meets with adjacent the slightest opposition, tightens his jaw to the cracking point, and this ought to beryllium foreshadowing enough. But Icke cannot halt himself from alerting america to his script’s cleverness by including a big of treble entendres—“You’ll beryllium the decease of me,” Jocasta says, looking up astatine her hubby adoringly—and flirting with the borderline betwixt fearfulness and farce. Icke’s sensibility is defiantly icky: helium has the accidentally incestuous mates fondle and buss and fumble successful each other’s underwear. He does, though, yet redirect the nighttime backmost toward a much sincerely felt ambiance of tragedy, handing an eleventh-hour monologue to Manville, who gives a agelong code astir a past that Jocasta hoped to person buried with a definite baby. Icke destabilizes the aged Sophoclean calculus: what happened to Jocasta arsenic a thirteen-year-old acold surpasses thing that Oedipus volition suffer. But, of course, it’s his sanction up determination connected the marquee. Mothers ne'er get the recognition they deserve. ♦
English (CA) · 
English (US) · 
Spanish (MX) ·