Actors Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty hope their performances in the new Broadway musical “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” will encourage theatergoers to rediscover the power of human connection, even if that requires looking up from their phones more often.
“Doing this show has reminded me just how much I’m on my phone,” Pitts said. “We’re so busy in our phones, disconnected … it really closes you off. You could be sitting right next to somebody who could change your life, and not even know it.”
In a season dominated by lavish revivals and stage adaptations of hit films, “Two Strangers” is a sweet treat of a romantic comedy, with Pitts and Tutty making up its entire cast. The show, featuring an anthemic pop score by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, follows Dougal Todd (Tutty), a young British man who arrives in New York to attend the wedding of his estranged father to the sister of an American woman, Robin Rainey (Pitts).
A sassy, if hard-boiled, barista, Robin is dismissive of Dougal’s wide-eyed naïveté and puppyish enthusiasm for New York’s tourist traps. When she’s tasked with picking up her sister’s wedding cake, however, Dougal tags along, and the two form an unexpected bond that leads to a woozy, cross-borough night on the town and, later, a shared understanding of each other’s vulnerabilities.
