Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) Broadway Reviews

As gleefully as the musical follows the formula of the rom-com genre, it also has a welcome comfort with ambiguity and, stashed up its sleeve, some psychological bombs. The action floats along so comfortably, both in and out of song, that it seems odd to interrupt that momentum with an intermission. But the second act brings a stark shift in tone, getting darker for a while before rebounding with great silliness and gratifying sympathy.

As you grow, you do the hard work of parting with the vision of the world you had in your head. That’s a dynamic repeated throughout Two Strangers. Dougal is learning to give up both his idealized image of a foreign city and the relationship with his father he thinks he could re-ignite during this trip, and Robin learns to abandon the myth she’s telling herself about her own failure. When the show’s creators zero in on those feelings, something a lot more specific and wistful than a love story between two strangers, the piece comes alive. If only it stayed there.

As for the stage itself, the design (also by Gilmour) consists of two towers of silver painted luggage of various sizes on a turntable. It’s not the most visually exciting backdrop, but the suitcases do prove inventive, opening at various points to reveal props, a closet, a bed, a vanity, and even a noodle shop. The turntable also leads to lots of dramatic walking in place. Not highly original, but effective enough. The same could probably be said of the entire romantic comedy genre, but when you have the right stars and the right songs, it doesn’t really matter. If it works, it works. And Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) definitely works. Grade: B+

The musical packs a more precise punch charting the grittier realities of Dougal and Robin’s emotions. It is very funny when Dougal rightly identifies Robin as his kind-of-new-auntie. It is sad when he realizes the truth about his dad, and it is also puzzling that he is so in the dark about it all pre-landing in America; Robin’s relationship with her sister is also under-explained and underwritten. The show is beautiful when it explodes with an old-fashioned song-and-dance number (“American Express”), the pair dressed to the nines, sweeping Fred-and-Gingerishly through the city for one night of expense and extravagance.

The musical comes dangerously close to cloying sentimentality at times, but Dougal’s dry sense of humor and Tutty’s first-class delivery prevents the story from ever getting too soupy.

Stories with odd couples on the edge of Eros, so to speak, can be very effective (see the movie “Lost in Translation” or the musical “The Band’s Visit“) but if writers choose to have their couple get naked and hit the sheets, in this case at the Plaza Hotel, since we’re all about New York aspiration here, they struggle to know where to go. So while this show held me for Act One with its considerable charm, by Act Two, it was hitting turbulence. 90 minutes and out would have been a better plan.

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan wrote the songs and the book for this rom-com two-hander, and they begin “Two Strangers” with real promise. The young man Dougal (Tutty) is newly arrived at JFK from London and eager to meet his American father for the very first time. Dad’s getting married and the bride’s sister, Robin (Pitts), picks him up at the airport. As meet-cutes go, this one turns very problematic in Act 2, if not before.

But then I thought: It’s symbolic of the unsettled lives of these two young characters. And it shows a bit of resourcefulness: Sometimes the piles of luggage seem to suggest a Manhattan avenue lined with skyscrapers, sometimes a hill in Central Park in a snowy Central Park. And I suppose one might consider the whole production — those trunks, only two actors, the five-piece band visible on stage — to be so different in many ways (not including top ticket price) from the more usual big-budget would-be blockbusters on Broadway that it’s almost refreshing.

Some may find Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) a pleasant enough holiday confection, but as Robin says to Dougal to squelch his movie fantasy of NYC, “You know how much it costs to go for dinner in midtown Manhattan? To see a Broadway show? New York is just money, that’s all it is.” Consider, instead, seeking out one of the best cake slices in New York City and calling it a night.

Admittedly, though, there isn’t a lot to unpack here (it ain’t “Chess”), but the show thankfully feels both simple and honest. (Again, it ain’t “Chess.”) Most of all, I can think of no two people better equipped to carry this delightful musical than Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts. Let’s hope they don’t stay strangers to the Broadway stage.

Every now and then, an enchanting new musical classic comes along out of nowhere. Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York, which opened Thursday at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, is a modern musical romance that has the feel of an old-fashioned movie but also the look and sound of a story that could only take place in 2025.

There are plenty of quibbles to be made about Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). It drags at times, and its two-and-a-quarter hour running time could easily be cut to an intermissonless 90 or 100 minutes. The plotting occasionally proves murky and less than convincing, and it’s more effective in its comic than emotional beats. But no matter. This is a show so charming, so adorable, that you can easily overlook its flaws. A little bit like falling in love.

Then there’s the acting, singing and brief dancing. Pitts’s performance, especially svelte and stylish in Gilmour’s night-at-the-Plaza gown, is mercurial throughout, making Robin’s initial annoyance and then intelligent concern thoroughly penetrating. As to newcomer Tutty, who took home last year’s Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his take on the imported Dear Evan Hansen: His “New York” introduction makes it dazzlingly clear that a London musical leading-man hasn’t been carried in on the local theater tide since Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence and Anthony Newley in The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd. Tutty’s appealing looks, pure voice, comic instincts, and obvious acting skills, and somehow resemblance to a living Teletubby make him the huge plus for a vital Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) run.

Tutty (who wears his role like muscle memory, having originated it in London) and Pitts flex their chemistry as scene partners: Dougal is an animated, British chatterbox who views the Big Apple through a lens of pop culture, while she’s the exhausted New York native who rolls her eyes at his touristy prattling. Their adventure involves Tinder matchmaking, nods to rom-com tropes, some verbal and physical stumbles, and a spending spree with a borrowed American Express. The writers get plenty of mileage from quips about the taboo that the pair are soon to be in-laws.

My heart is a generally open one, and I did not walk away from Two Strangers fuming about the state of modern musical theater. It has an agreeableness that will offend no one, and will surely charm many. But I should’ve known from its twee little title that this would not be for me, and I was unfortunately correct. You have to trust your gut, sometimes, whether with love or desserts. The results will come out eventually.

Director and choreographer Tim Jackson keeps all the entertaining city escapades zipping along, but even so the show stretches a bit too long, especially the second act, which still leaves a few questions hanging. More heft is needed to warrant the show’s two-hour running time. The desire for a bit more edge is cemented when, near the end of the show, Robin and Dougal sing a song titled ‘Dearly Beloved‘. Those words immediately brought to mind the start of the ecstatic ‘La Vie Bohème‘, the act-one closer from Rent, another musical that has an energetic number in a Lower East Side restaurant.

What ultimately makes Two Strangers such a winning Broadway arrival is its belief that tenderness is still theatrical currency. Jackson’s direction keeps the show surefooted, even at its most delicate, allowing Tutty and Pitts, and the entire creative team, to craft something that sneaks up on you. As we saw with Maybe Happy Ending, audiences are hungry for productions that treat emotion as serious craft, and hopefully, with these delightfully engaging Two Strangers, the much-needed emotional connection will deliver the Tony Award goods once again.