Theatre in Review: Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) (Longacre Theatre)

	Christiani Pitts, Sam Tutty. Photo: Matthew Murphy

A visit to the Longacre Theatre calls up two (for these days) heretical thoughts: One, even on Broadway, modesty can be a virtue. Two, in a musical, a solid book may be more important than the music and lyrics. Consider the case of Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), a musical two-hander that, unlike so many of its competitors, seeks to charm and amuse audiences rather than stun them into submission. There are no scenic wonders or high-pressure production numbers. Nobody screams their head off. Instead, librettists/composers Jim Barne and Kit Buchan rely on an intriguing situation featuring a well-matched pair of comic opposites, plus some touching revelations and attractive songs. Tim Jackson's light-touch production supplies a pair of ideal leads for this sort of/maybe/kind of love story. It is an act of prestidigitation: Entertainment and real emotional engagement are pulled out of thin air.

The book's two strangers are both attached, however shakily, to a glitzy Financial District wedding ceremony. Dougal arrives from London to meet the groom, the father he has never known. (His parents' marriage broke up before he was born; his dad moved to New York and became a successful financier.) Robin, from the bride's family, is scurrying around town, carrying out last-minute errands, including picking up Dougal. In the first of many awkward moments, Dougal assumes that the bride is the twentysomething Robin's mother, making them sibling in-laws. Wrong: Robin's thirty-year-old sister is marrying Dougal's dad, who will never see fifty again. This will lead, in due time, to Dougal noting that, technically, Robin is his aunt, a notion that gets an Arctic response from the lady in question.

Dougal, who works in a cinema and whose sense of New York was shaped by movies like Home Alone II, is the most starry-eyed of tourists, bent on hitting all the sights. Robin, an overworked barista in a Village coffee joint too cutely named Bump 'n' Grind, wants nothing to do with this rube from the English countryside. She has good reason: Dougal immediately demands that they make "a spiritual journey" to the Statue of Liberty, contritely adding, "You're from New York, so you probably go up the Statue of Liberty all the time." (Her response is silent and slack-jawed.) Later, trying to buddy up to Robin, Dougal announces, "Yo, yo, yo! Bride in the house! Whaddup sis!" This produces a stunned silence, followed by her query: "You got black people in England, right?"

Their relationship is pure vaudeville, enhanced by a pair of performers who understand just how far to push their characters' clashing sensibilities. Sam Tutty, an award-winning Evan Hansen in the West End, creates an equally ingenuous, if more resilient, figure here, bouncing around the stage like a rubber toy, imitating bits of his favorite New York films ("Keep the change, ya filthy animal!"), and affecting a street-smart attitude that makes him look as sophisticated as Steven Spielberg's ET. (He sings, "There's snow in the city tomorrow, just see it come twinkling down/And that's why they all call it 'Tinseltown'.") The character, a good-natured loser who still lives with his mum, could quickly become grating, but Tutty handles him with grace, giving his character an airy innocence while keeping just this side of maudlin. Christiani Pitts, last seen struggling to get out of King Kong's paw in the musical of that name, marshals an army of silent, deadpan responses that land laugh after laugh; she is also convincingly lost, scarred by a bad love affair, stuck in a dead-end job, and mysteriously estranged from her family. She makes an especially fine thing of "This Year," one of the show's more urgent numbers, in which Robin confronts the dreams of a better life that may never pay off.

With their clashing sensibilities and temperamental differences, Dougal and Robin make a fine pair of quarter-life crises. Appalled at the Chinatown dive into which he has booked himself, she reluctantly allows him to tag along as she picks up the wedding cake, leading to culinary disaster, an all-night on-the-town spree on someone else's credit card, and a rueful morning after in a Plaza Hotel bedroom, when real feelings and harsh truths must be faced.

On a first hearing, the score isn't likely to yield any cabaret standards, but Barne and Buchan have an incisive way with lyrics. Dougal poignantly imagines getting to know his dad, also revealing something about his man-boy status: "Watching Lethal Weapon 2 together/Eating chicken Vindaloo together/Singing carols round the tree together/Watching Lethal Weapon 3 together." They team up amusingly in "On the App," checking out Robin's Tinder options, which include "attention-seeking narcissists/who seem to think they're geniuses/And though you never asked, insist on/Showing you their penises." Later, pouring cold water on Dougal's fantasies, Robin notes compares his dad to Santa Claus: "Announced by a jingle of sleigh bells/He'll sail into view through the mist/He's handsome, he's tall, he's the substance of all of your dreams/And he doesn't exist."

It's during the latter bit that Two Strangers... runs into a bit of trouble. All along, we've been wondering why Dougal's father has suddenly decided to include him in his life, yet declined to see him before the big event. Furthermore, why is Robin, who is so busy with wedding preparations, not on the guest list? And why hasn't she seen her beloved grandmother, who raised her, in two years? (The old lady is a mere subway ride away in Flatbush.) The answers, when they come, aren't exactly unbelievable, but they point to a more complicated story happening offstage, which could use rather more attention than it gets here.

Still, the show musical breathes a casual, freeform air that makes one happy to ride along with this oddball, slightly heartbroken duo. Their tour of the city is staged on Soutra Gilmour's set, a pileup of luggage that proves to have many ingenious uses. (Gilmour's costumes nicely suggest Dougal and Robin's differing origins; she includes a nifty onstage costume change.) Jack Knowles's lighting fluently suggests various locations, including a dance club and a snowy city street. Beginning with radio news broadcasts in two countries, Tony Gayle's sound design evokes many locations, including the AirTrain, the subway, and a church; his reinforcement is unusually transparent and clear.

Best of all, the authors don't oversell Dougal and Robin's growing emotional entanglements, instead using their brief encounter to learn something valuable about themselves. The appealingly open-ended finale sends you out of the theatre wondering what will happen next. Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is the most unassuming musical in town. It's also one of the more entertaining, in part because it relies on solid writing rather than distracting gimmicks. In a Broadway scene that keeps grasping after bigger and more expensive thrills, that's food for thought.--David Barbour