Jim Barne and Kit Buchan were terrified of being outed as frauds. After all, they were two very British writers creating a very New York musical. And they’d only ever been to the Big Apple as tourists.
Turns out, they needn’t worry about appearing as outsiders. Their deep admiration of and fascination with the city and all its idiosyncrasies — “We live in London, but we’re New York obsessives,” Buchan admits — radiates through “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).” A charming two-hander, the musical rom-com follows a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Brit named Dougal (Sam Tutty) who travels to New York City for his estranged father’s wedding after a lifetime of fantasizing about visiting the big city. He ends up tagging along with the sister of the bride, a jaded native New Yorker named Robin (Christiani Pitts), as she runs last-minute errands — including picking up an expensive wedding cake all the way in Flatbush, Brooklyn.
“All along, we were afraid we would be received in a hostile way. Like, ‘Who are these Londoners who think they can write a show about New York? They’re not one of us,’” says Buchan. “We thought everyone on Broadway would know each other, and we’d be transported back to that childhood playground feeling of, ‘Those are the cool kids, and we’re massive losers.’ Actually, it’s not been like that at all.”
In fact, “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” has been embraced by critics and audiences, and the production is nominated in eight categories at the Tony Awards, including best musical, book and original score. First produced around England in 2019, the show had lauded runs on the West End and Cambridge’s American Repertory Theater before transferring to Broadway’s Longacre Theatre last November. Given the (mouthful of a) moniker, the New York stage was naturally the final frontier.
“Whenever we hear a New Yorker say they liked it, it’s like sunshine in our veins,” Buchan says.
Barne and Buchan are longtime friends who share a sense of humor (the extremely tall men like to joke they have a combined height of 12’6”) and love of pop culture. They met in grade school at age 9 and spent decades writing pop songs and jamming on the guitar for fun before trying their hand at crafting a musical.
British writers Jim Barne and Kit Buchan have been friends since age 9
Barne doesn’t overthink the secret sauce of their creative partnership. “We just have a nice time,” he cracks.
As Brits, they might be prone to modesty. Tim Jackson, the director of “Two Strangers,” refers to the synergy of Barne and Buchan as “next level.”
“Their minds are so full of yummy brilliance,” Jackson says via email. “And the amount of care they put into every line, lyric and musical note they write is staggering.”
Though Barne and Buchan have lived across the pond all their lives, they were raised on American comedies like “Friends.” With “Two Strangers,” they pay homage to New York-set and Christmas-centric movies like “When Harry Met Sally,” “Moonstruck,” “Home Alone” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”
“We wanted to write a show that’s a pastiche of those stories but also has a lovely attitude,” Buchan says. “We wanted to have our cake and eat it too.”
On a recent afternoon, the pair met at a bustling coffee shop to talk about making their Broadway debut, their love of New York City and their ambitions to make a “plotless” musical.
How have you been enjoying New York City? Now that you’ve spent more time here, is the city what you’d imagined?
Barne: The first time we came out last fall, we didn’t have any free time. We had all these things we were desperate to do. We went boating in Central Park and went to Coney Island. We were having a wonderful time, but we were just in the theater all the time.
Buchan: We were living in Hell’s Kitchen on 10th Avenue. I was in a fifth-floor walk-up above a gay club called It’s Him, and the staircase was fumigated every Wednesday. It was just wonderful. It was exactly what I wanted. The producers were like, “You want to live here?”
What was your relationship to New York City before you wrote the show?
Buchan: It was rather like our lead actor. In his case, he’s never been here. In our case, we had a very intense cultural curiosity about New York, to the point of having a sort of aspirational familiarity. A lot of that came from movies and musical theater. Dougal has a kind of delusion that he is already part of it, and we had a bit of that delusion in a way. By virtue of writing this play, we’ve made our own fantasy become a reality, which is the loveliest side effect imaginable.
Where did you get the idea for “Two Strangers”?
Buchan: When we were younger, we were a bit lost. Not just in terms of musical theater, but a lot of art forms; we felt a little bit alienated from the general narrative. It was quite rare to encounter a musical that spoke to the way that we perceived ourselves, because I think musicals do quite naturally lend themselves to stories about big, aspirational, ambitious characters. We hoped it might be possible to dramatize this fluctuation in people’s lives, but for the stakes to feel high enough, even though it was the familiar lives of two not-rich, not-famous, not-ambitious, not-infamous, not-world-changing people.
How did the specific elements, like carrying a cake across New York, come together?
Barne: Some of them were by necessity. We had a workshop early, probably in 2018, and the whole first act was spent on the subway, coming in from the airport. One of the writers at this workshop was like, “It would be more fun if they weren’t on the subway for all of Act One. New York is an amazing place. Maybe they should be out in the city.” We’d done a show before where we had far too much plot.
Buchan: Far too much plot.
Barne: We decided we don’t want any plot. We’re going to do a plotless musical. Just two characters chatting.
Buchan: Our first musical had a cast of 16, and we did it with a company of 34 kids between the ages of 10 and 23. It was so complex. We didn’t choose to do a two-hander for commercial reasons. We chose to do it because we thought we could streamline the process of writing a musical. But it causes more trouble than it solves, because then you have this problem of “How do you move them around?” Act One is basically one long scene. There are no breaks in the action, so how do you negotiate this trajectory and keep it interesting for an audience so they don’t get tired of looking at the same two people chatting to each other and singing?
Barne: On different modes of public transportation. Sometimes you hear authors talking about stories just, like, dropping into their heads. It definitely wasn’t like that.
Buchan: Where did the cake come from? Once we knew we were setting it at a wedding, there are certain things that present themselves to you.
I love hearing about how projects are named, because it’s usually a more involved process than people realize. How did you land on this very long title?
Barne: We can show you a list of 200 names we were choosing between.
Buchan: It was the fifth name the musical had. It went on professionally under a different title before coming to Broadway. It was called “The Season.” There was a focus group, and our producers were like, “We don’t think the title is working. “We think we need a new one.” We wrote this huge document of titles being —
Barne: — more and more strange.
Buchan: “Two Strangers” was down at the bottom of the list. We had a brilliant producer named Tim Johansen, who said, “Good musicals describe.” Almost as a joke, at the very bottom of the list, we wrote “Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.” He was like, “I think that’s it.” And we were like, “Really?”
Did you get any helpful feedback from New Yorkers?
Barne: We have a very dear [mentor], David James. He runs this workshop we did, and he helped with Robin’s order in the Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. He said, “You need to put cold sesame noodles.” It’s not a thing in the U.K.
Buchan: The kind of restaurant we had in mind to go to in Chinatown was an older kind of ’70s, slightly Americanized Chinese thing. He was the first person to be like, “This is not your order, and a New Yorker will know. That’s not something you’d order.”
Was there a moment you knew it was going to work on Broadway?
Barne: It wasn’t until we saw it with a live audience. It was terrifying. So just the relief that people were laughing… You always forget, but this happens every time: You go into the rehearsal period, and no one laughs at the entire rehearsal period, because everyone knows the show and they’ve heard the joke a million times. You sort of forget that it’s funny. Then you go into the auditorium, and people laugh, and you’re like, [gasps].
Buchan: And there were jokes that no one ever laughed at in London. For example, when Dougal says to Robin, “Well, you’re from New York, so you probably go to the Statue of Liberty all the time.”
Barne: Because they were like, “Probably she does, right?”
Buchan: You have to have faith in the writing that it might ultimately pay off. At an opening night party for us, Tye Blue, the director and writer of “Titanique,” who I’d never met, bounded up to me and was like, “You’re a Critics’ Pick in the New York Times!” I was like, “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds good.” I mean, I did know what it meant, but I didn’t realize what an important moment that would be for the show. Then we could breathe a sigh of relief that at least we hadn’t humiliated ourselves.
The show is laugh-out-loud funny. Do you have one line or joke in the show you’re really proud of?
Buchan: I am the book writer, but Jim did come up with a lot of the funniest jokes.
Barne: That’s not true. Don’t put that in the interview.
Buchan: You can put that in the interview.
Barne: Often the bits you enjoy the most are the bits you didn’t fully foresee.
Buchan: When Robin says “I’m cold,” and Dougal says “You’re not as cold as you think.” People laugh, and I always think, “That’s worked so well. I could never have possibly hoped that moment would work well as it does.”
Have you had any experiences of famous people coming to see the show?
Buchan: We live in London, so that has happened a couple of times when we weren’t able to meet them, but it was nevertheless mind-blowingly exciting. We’ve had a couple of heart-stopping meeting your heroes days, particularly with musical theater writers. It feels really strange because you’re so nervous about them seeing the work. When we were in London, Lin-Manuel Miranda came to see the show. And so did Susan Sarandon. I adore her.
Barne: Pasek and Paul came to see the show. We met Benj Pasek after, and he was so kind. We met [“Frozen” songwriters] Bobby and Kristen Lopez. They are so down-to-earth and funny.
Buchan: It made the actors feel wonderful. In fact, I watched the way they spoke to us and thought, “If we’re ever in a position of going to see somebody’s show, I would like to be able to do it like that.” It was so honest. We were trying to be cool, and then they left the room and we [freaked out].
How does the theater scene in New York compare to the West End?
Barne: Central London kind of dies off after 10:30 p.m. It’s so lovely to be able to just stroll into a bar after the theater and have a drink and something sweet. I mean, it’s a bit dangerous.
Buchan: There was a pub near the theater in London where we would always go, and it would sort of immediately close. Or it would be last call. Whereas, The Longacre is next to an Irish pub called Hurley’s. It’s been there since the late 19th century. It’s run by a man named Paul. He’s really lovely. We met him in our first week, and he was like, “We’ve got our fingers crossed for you. We really need a hit.” The Longacre hasn’t had a show run for very long for a while because of COVID. That sense of interconnectedness of the Broadway community, I suddenly felt like, “I really want to do it for Paul.”
Have you had any glamorous nights out in the city like Robin and Dougal do in the show? Have you visited the Plaza?
Barne: My sister came to New York for her 40th birthday. It was the night before our opening on Broadway. She brought some friends, and we tried to arrange to go to the Plaza for drinks before her birthday meal. We got there, and they were like, “You can’t drink now, but you can come back at 6 p.m., but you’ll need a reservation.” We were like, “OK, well, can we reserve a table? They were like, “No.” So I haven’t been yet. But the Tonys afterparty is at the Plaza, so maybe we finally get in.
Leave a Reply