When Tom Met Nora

Tom Hanks and Maura Tierney in Lucky Guy (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Tom Hanks/Nora Ephron romance, which brought them so much success with romcoms onscreen, has continued even after Ephron's death with the current Broadway play, Lucky Guy. In this the romance is between Ephron and New York City's tabloid newsrooms, which she idealizes as places of rough-and-tumble civic chivalry. That's one reason I wasn't as taken with the show as most of my peers (are we sensing a trend here?), not to mention Tony nominators, but it did pass the time amiably. From my review for America:

McAlary is a great role for Hanks, in his overdue Broadway debut, and not just because he’s essentially a nice guy with a burning if bland ambition, whose only flaw seems to be a brand of ornery Irish stubbornness that hardens into hubris once he has a taste of power. Hanks conveys these qualities and hits the marks of McAlary’s overdetermined rise-and-fall-and-redemption journey adequately. But it is McAlary’s very averageness that makes him a perfect role for Hanks, because it’s a sketchy part that needs an actor as charismatic, as magnetically human, as this to keep us interested in his somewhat rote trials and tribulations. Even sporting a slight paunch and a furry Tom Selleck moustache, the 56-year-old film star has as much warmth and watchability onstage as he does on film, maybe more.

Read the whole thing here.