This fresh new musical romcom is a treat - not too sickly, but perfectly sweet. The tone is exactly what you’d expect from the title: offbeat, a little bit indie, knowing its quirks. And so’s the premise. Literally.
Two twentysomething strangers cross paths in NYC. Their meet is not especially cute. Feckless Brit Dougal (Sam Tutty) has flown over for a whirlwind 36-hour trip based around his estranged dad’s wedding. Extremely tired native New Yorker Robin (Dujonna Gift) is sister of the bride, and has been dispatched to meet him at the airport. The cake is a wedding cake, which she has to pick up from Brooklyn. He tags along for the ride: they take it in an Uber. Will passion rise, like the perfect sponge? Or will it prove to have a soggy bottom? No spoilers, but the answer is unexpected and totally charming, you will walk out with a very big soppy smile on your face.
Jim Barne and Kit Buchan’s musical premiered in 2023 at the much smaller Kiln Theatre in Kilburn. I thought it might have some problems scaling up to the West End – it’s a thrifty affair, with a cast of two and one ingenious set. (Soutra Gilmore’s design, as always, deserves a special mention: a series of flight cases that flip open to become a Chinatown restaurant, a fancy cocktail spot, an ice skating rink and the Plaza Hotel). But it is carried joyfully onwards and upwards by the wit and charm of its excellent cast, its upbeat music and outstanding libretto.
Streaming channels are totally oversaturated with spammy derivative romcoms, especially ones e set in a big city at Christmas (as this one is). But ‘Two Strangers…’ has a tonne of fun parodying all those cliches: the ice skating, the makeover scene, the creepy schmaltzy ’50s singers who are dressing up as Santa Claus to get in mommy’s pants. It’s like an updated Richard Curtis movie, with the gazillion extra characters, extreme whiteness and dated sexual politics removed… and pointed songs about Tinder added in. ‘There must be a decent available guy somewhere inside this phone!’, sings disappointed New York waitress, Robin. The course of true love never did run smooth, whatever the apps promise.
For a great rom com, you need to fall in love a little with the leads. The writers have done a great job on Dougal, a charmingly rumpled British cinema attendant who spends his evenings happily at home drinking gin with his Mum, ‘big Polly’. Tutty is a real talent. He brings the sweetness and floppiness of early career Hugh Grant, but relies less on cringey posh diffidence and more on a sweet theatricality - he’s seen the movies and now he’s determined to live the dream.
As tough-on-the-outside New York waitress Robin, Dujonna Gift brings a powerful voice and emotional presence to a prickly role that’s less sympathetic because it is less well-rounded.
Nevertheless, you’re rooting them both. The wide-eyed Englishman-in-New York schtick would go down as well on Broadway, I think, as the West End - Robin's motivation and context would need sharpening. I wasn’t humming any of the tunes the next day, but there were lots of funny lines I wanted to remember. And it passed the ‘good date’ test with flying colours: this show made me feel very happy on the night, and on the morning after.
