It has a silly title and an even sillier plot. The stars are largely unknown to New York audiences. It’s not based on a movie or any other existing IP. But look for the new musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) to be the sleeper hit of the season.
It doesn’t look promising when you enter the Longacre Theatre and see the stage littered with a giant pile of luggage. But Soutra Gilmour’s scenic design, much more versatile than it initially appears, turns out to be one of many clever elements in this show by Jim Barnes and Kit Buchan that premiered at London’s Kiln Theatre before moving to the West End (it also played earlier this year at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA). The lead actor, Sam Tutty, is reprising his role on Broadway, and another reason that you should see the show is that you’ll be able to brag about seeing him onstage before he became a big star.
This is one of the most impressive New York stage debuts in recent memory. The actor, who won an Olivier Award for the London production of Dear Evan Hansen, plays Dougal, a twenty-four-year-old Brit who has arrived in the city for the wedding of his wealthy father. Dougal has never actually met his dad, mind you, who abandoned him and his mother before he was even born. But he’s thrilled to finally meet him, and he’s even more thrilled to be in New York, which he has seen only in movies. He expresses his boundless excitement with the ebullient opening number “New York.”
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Dougal may be enthusiastic, but the person waiting to greet him at the airport is far less so. She’s Robin (Christiani Pitts, King Kong, A Bronx Tale), the younger sister of the woman Dougal’s father is going to marry. Picking Dougal up is one of but many tasks assigned Robin by her sister, who for reasons left unexplained until late in the show is not allowing her to attend the wedding.
The sardonic Robin, who works as a barista, doesn’t exactly take to the endlessly voluble Dougal, whom she accurately describes as “like a golden retriever, only with less boundaries.” She’s intent on getting him to the fleabag Chinatown hotel that he’s booked for $80 a night as quickly as possible, but Dougal has other plans. He desperately wants to see the sites, and he implores her to join him. But she has things to do at her sister’s behest, such as pick up the lavish wedding cake figuring in the show’s title.
Dougal offers to help her, which inevitably leads to a series of comic misadventures across the Big Apple. Along the way, don’t you know, Robin warms up to the human golden retriever, especially since he provides the emotional support she’s desperately craving. To describe more of the plot would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that secrets are revealed and both emerge sadder but wiser.
But that doesn’t begin to describe how much sheer fun the evening provides, thanks to the terrific, stylistically varied musical score, witty lyrics, and hilarious book. But even more thanks to the lead performers, who invest their portrayals with such sharp comic timing and emotional depths that you find yourself rooting for this unlikely couple to get together.
Pitts is terrific, although for long stretches she’s relegated to being the straight man to Tutty’s torrent of one-liners. But she more than holds her own with her co-star and delivers such solo numbers as “This Year” in powerhouse fashion.
But it’s Tutty who’s the revelation. Coming across like a younger, more lovable James Corden, he’s so endlessly winning that he has the audience on his side from the moment he bursts onstage. He also becomes an instant frontrunner in the Tony race for Best Actor in a Musical.
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.
