Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).
Photo: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall

Presented by American Repertory Theater
A Kiln Theatre Production
By Jim Barne and Kit Buchan
Directed and Choreographed by Tim Jackson
Music Direction by Jeffrey Campos
Featuring: Christiani Pitts, Sam Tutty 

May 20 – July 13, 2025
Loeb Drama Center
64 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Digital playbill 

This production contains haze, fog, and flashing lights. Recommended for ages 12+.
Run Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, including one intermission

Critique by Kitty Drexel

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York) hit Harvard Square just before Harvard’s various commencement ceremonies. It’s a politically charged time when Harvard has spent months fighting for its freedoms as an educational organization (among which, its freedom to receive federal funding as a contractor with the federal government). The Square is flooded with awed tourists collecting memories and memorabilia as their family members graduate from Harvard’s hallowed halls. Meanwhile, pissed off locals navigate around slow-paced bodies as we rush about our work-a-day lives. Coincidentally, it’s a dichotomy captured in Two Strangers. 

As in the musical playing at the Loeb Drama Center, the U.S. has a different reputation at home than it does outside of our country: The U.S. (and by extension Harvard University), depending on who you ask, is an untamed land of permissible behavior and flashy but great industrial innovations. The international community loves us or hates us depending on their income level and political leanings. Many of our citizens feel the same. 

So, it comes to no great surprise that main character Dougal (Sam Tutty) expects New York to resemble the city he’s seen in the movies: action adventures, “I’m walkin’ here,” tourist traps, and musical montages. Robin (Christiani Pitts) quickly corrects Dougal’s expectations. New York tourism is for people with money, she says. They are broke. It turns out, they are also broken on the inside. Oh hey – just like our transportation, judicial and political systems (etc.)! Welcome, new friend.

The American Repertory Theater summarizes Two Strangers thusly: British tourist Dougal, an upbeat chavy himbo with impulse control problems, has just landed in New York City for his deadbeat dad’s second, million dollar wedding. Dougal is met by Robin, frustrated sister of the bride and Dougal’s reluctant, new aunt. He wants to see the sights; She’s late for work and the Bump N Grind coffee shop. Like a golden retriever, Dougal proceeds to follow Robin to her workplace and then on a mission to Flat Bush to pick up the fancypants, gluten-free, quadruple decker wedding cake for their toxic family’s wedding. 

Without spoiling anything, the thing that always happens when two bickering persons perform a high-stakes errand for offstage VIPs ends up happening. Because, of course it does. The cake is Chekhov’s gun; we see it coming from a mile away. Two Strangers might as well be an episode of ABC’s Perfect Strangers (1986 -1993). 

Anyhoo, instead of doing the responsible thing, Robin and Dougal spend money they don’t have on a night they’ll never forget in Manhattan. In the morning, the two must reconcile the lies they’ve told themselves and each other with reality. Two Strangers is a musical about the stories we choose to believe when the truth is too painful to accept. 

I really wanted to like this musical. It seemed like everyone else in the audience had a blast. They laughed, clapped and gasped at all of the appropriate moments. They gave the cast, orchestra and crew a standing ovation at the end. I was (am) jealous of everyone else’s good time. 

Tutty and Pitts and excellent performers. Their character work was believable; they were clearly working hard to deliver an excellent performance. Characters Dougal and Robin have boundary issues; they aren’t likeable characters, but Tutty and Pitts are exceedingly likeable performers. I wanted these characters to find happiness despite the personalities Barne and Buchan gave them. 

They performed so well that I wished the material was better. They sang the shit out of Barne and Buchan’s mediocre music: they have solid, expressive belts; their lilting ballads were sweet and strong. They deserve high praise for their hard work parkouring across Soutra Gilmour’s climbable suitcase set design. 

For a musical about the wonders of New York, the creators of Two Strangers wrote as if they’ve never visited; they’d only ever seen it on T.V. or at the movies. And not even recent T.V. or movies: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) and Die Hard (1988). The cast album (available to stream on the A.R.T. website) sounds like your standard pop musical; their lyrics lack originality. Additionally, it takes Barne and Buchan 90 minutes to reveal the show’s stakes to the audience. Call me an old-fashioned bitch but, if I’m going to spend two and a half hours in a theatre, I need to know within 20 minutes of the lights going down why I’m in the audience and contextually why I should care about the musical’s characters. Altruism and empathy are for churches and fundraisers; they don’t justify a ticket price.    

This musical is meant to appeal to the American youth. In the parlance of teens: Two Strangers gave me the ick. Now, I don’t know a skibidi toilet from an Ohio gyat about what American young people want. But, I don’t think this is it. Two Strangers is good for cheugy millennials who’ll find the Gryffindor and Whitney Houston references clever instead of dated. Maybe it’s for audiences who want a musical more current than Operation Mincemeat. We’d all love another Six, but Two Strangers isn’t it. I sincerely hope others have a better time than I did. 

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