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★★★★★
Take a disillusioned New Yorker and mix them with an excited British tourist who has never seen the city. Add warm music, smooth vocals, and a generous sprinkle of comedy. There you have a recipe for success. This is Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) at the Criterion Theatre.
When Robin (Dujonna Gift) picks up Dougal (Sam Tutty) from the airport, the pair seem polar opposites. She is poised, he is excitable, her lines are spread with sarcasm, his littered with apologetic humour. She is American, he is British. All that unites them is that they are twenty-somethings brought together by the wedding of physically close but emotionally distant relatives.
Robin and Dougal’s relationship may be a slow burn but their strong comic delivery means the audience are quick to warm up to them. Refined through a previous sold-out run at the Kiln Theatre, Gift and Tutty share an electric chemistry on the West End stage and their comic friction is euphoric to watch. Comedy can be difficult. One failed gag early on can imbue a theatre with awkward silence, or worse a pitiful chuckle. However, the humour, a testament to writers Jim Barne and Kit Buchan’s script, is the main strength of Two Strangers. An early debate about marmite, something Dougal loves but Robin has never heard of, is familiar to the audience and gets them instantly laughing. From this point onwards, the audience’s investment becomes a third character within this two-hander. We oooh at a quick costume change, aw at a compliment, and gasp at a confession at not liking Frank Sinatra.
This is not to say Two Strangers is all joke and no sentimental feeling. A highlight of the show is Gift’s ballad ‘Be Happy’ where a typically emotionally-guarded Robin, takes us through her life, her regrets and why she can no longer stand New York. Watching on, Dougal becomes a stand-in for the characters who never appear on stage; a grandma, a sister, an ex-it’s complicated-lover. Here, it becomes clear that ‘Two Strangers’ is as much about the characters offstage as the ones on. The two-hander is the perfect form to explore this loneliness where you can open your heart and still hear no response.
Designed by Soutra Gilmour, the set of Two Strangers is simplistic. The backdrop of grey suitcases, piled upwards to imitate skyscrapers, makes this New York appear rather muted. But through clever prop design, these suitcases transform; they become a bed, metro seats, and even a Chinese restaurant. Under Tim Jackson’s direction, Gift and Tutty become magicians: Gift can make it seem that we are in a crowded coffee shop even when she is the only presence on stage, we fully believe the pair have been on a sightseeing adventure solely from seeing an energetic Tutty wearing a Statue of Liberty headband. In Two Strangers, New York is not a place but a state of mind, one Dougal embraces but Robin is desperate to shake. Both characters can learn something from the other.
Two Strangers may be New York set but it is designed for the Brit with humour often elicited from our stereotypes about the Big Apple – that Brooklyn is on the doorstep of Manhattan, that people talk like the movies, snow arrives at the perfect time. Comedy flows from Robin correcting each assumption, but in this stage-crafted New York, these assumptions are also kind of right. You can travel across the state in the space of a song, dialogue will transport you to Ghostbusters and Taxi Driver, and snow of course will fall when the mood hits.
Two Strangers is filled with self-aware cliches. But with an instant standing ovation, the audience approves.
Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York) is playing at the Criterion Theatre until July 14th.
Words by Jennifer Cartwright
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