Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) Creators Jim Barne & Kit Buchan on Bringing the Show to Broadway

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, who wrote the book, music and lyrics for Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), are now getting acquainted with the city in question. The significance of this moment is not lost on the longtime friends and collaborators, who first met in school when they were nine years old. Buchan notes that "bringing any show from out of New York into New York is already a daunting prospect. A show that's set in New York, the responsibility is magnified a thousand times." Still, he believes that "New Yorkers will get a kick out of" the version of New York the pair have created along with director Tim Jackson. "The way that we've been thinking about it is New York as a mythical city, a bit like The Emerald City in Oz, just with the added detail that it happens to exist in real life."

The show is told through the perspective of Dougal, played by Sam Tutty. Having only seen New York in movies, heard about it in songs and read about it in books, the character "has a rose-tinted image of the city." When it comes to their own sources of inspiration, there are "too many to count," but Barne nods to director Richard Linklater's Before film trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight). Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Barne points out that similarly to their show, the first two films take place over a very short period of time and focus on two characters.

The Band's Visit, one of the duo's favorite musicals of all time, also encouraged their creative pursuits. "When we set out to do this, we felt that we wanted to do something that was gently radical in the sense that we wanted to write a musical about two quite unimportant people not doing anything especially magnificent," Buchan shares of the process. "And that at the time felt quite exciting. We had a wager that you could write about the small emotional fluctuations of two strangers, and that those fluctuations could be moving enough to merit song."

As for those classic romantic comedy tropes, the two aimed to "challenge some of the expectations" when writing their musical. While Dougal believes in the magic of New York, of weddings and the holidays (all key parts of the story that serve to heighten the emotion), the other half of the two-hander "decidedly doesn't." Robin, played by Christiani Pitts, is a New York native just trying to make it through the day. It may be subtle, but as they briefly cross paths, there's an opportunity for growth and change. "Hopefully there's a sense that those characters have some slight kind of gravitational influence on one another."

Watch the video below for the full interview and to hear Barne and Buchan perform their song "New York" from Two Strangers.

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