When we first started working on this musical, writing it, we had a sort of impossible ambition to get it staged in a regional theater.

That was our just for anyone to buy a ticket and see it.

You know, the idea that it was ever going to come to Bway was the last thing on our minds.

We wouldn't have believed you.

And if we had, we'd have been terrified.

And we were terrified, actually.

So, where you headed, by the way?

New York, baby.

My name is Kit Bucken and I'm the bookw writer and lyricist of Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York.

My name is Jim Barn and I'm the composer.

What about Ethan?

No.

JJ Brad.

Oh, hello handsome.

Okay, that's you.

Yeah, that's me.

Well, Jim and I have been friends since we were nine and had been writing songs together since we were in our teens.

And in our 20s, we just sort of gently with one eye closed kind of began to step sideways into the world of writing a new musical.

And I think [music] we decided to write an original story because it gave us complete control and because we were people [music] in our mid-20s who were a bit lost and didn't know where we were going.

And um we wanted to write a story about people like that.

And we quickly found that there were a lot of people among our friends and among the audience who [music] were who were pleased to to recognize themselves in that way.

I think the idea actually sort of developed very organically over a long period of time and it it started with a lot of songs actually and then the story kind of became a way of tying the songs together.

I think maybe because we were songwriters [music] first and foremost.

Two Strangers is about a young [music] Englishman named Dooall Todd who is invited to his father's wedding in New York.

He's never been to New York and he's never [music] met his father.

He travels alone and when he arrives at the airport, he is greeted by Robin Rainey, who [music] is the bride's younger sister.

It's her job to look after him for two days, but she's also in the process of running last minute errands for the wedding.

So, the plot follows these two young people as they pass a sort of complex [music] winding trajectory across the city as the wedding approaches.

Oh my god.

[laughter] We really fell in love with the characters while we were writing the show and I think the hope would be for me that they leave loving the characters as well and feel emotionally connected to them.

I kind of like the idea that at the very beginning of the show, it's like I'm stuck with this like British puppy and this like, you know, quite chilly New Yorker and and when you've passed through that to a point of like really wanting stuff [music] for them and wanting them to be well, I would like people to feel that that investment was worthwhile or something in terms of like leaving the theater feeling like you'd had like a profound human experience of some kind [music] and maybe had been tricked into doing that by thinking you were seeing a sugary romcom.

taxi.

Are you sure you have one night in New York, Doug?

Let's do this.

People keep asking us, why do you keep writing shows set in America?

But I think it's because we just have this enduring fascination with New York it as a city.

It kind of belongs to everyone in that it's a mythological city that happens to exist in real life as well.

um people believe in it and think about it and picture themselves [music] there in the same way that they might do that for like El Dorado or the lost city of Atlantis or like ancient Rome or something.

It has this archetypal mythical power, [music] New York.

And that has made it possible for us as outsiders to remark on it because we're sharing in it as well.

If there was like an unconscious desire that we had in writing a musical, it was probably to feel at home in New York.

And that has happened as a result of writing this musical.

So, we kind of did make our own wish come true or [music] something in a roundabout way.

We are Broadway.

Are you always like this?

You'll get used to it.