Hi, I'm Palipilino!
New York, New York
1/11/2026
I'd been hearing a LOT of buzz about Two Strangers even before it opened in previews; it ended up transferring over from the West End around the end of 2025, and the whole time it was in previews I still heard a lot of great things. The comment I heard most often was comparing it, favorably, to the previous Tony Award for Best Musical winner, Maybe Happy Ending, in terms of its small cast and quirky, uplifting energy. It seems like we're gonna be seeing more and more of these small cast, somewhat lower-budget shows, with the state of Broadway prices being what it is. (That being said, I definitely wouldn't call Maybe Happy Ending low budget...)
Perhaps due to that similarity, I saw a lot buzz for this show, and while I didn't manage to grab one of its lower-price tickets in previews, I did see it relatively close to its opening in January. And not to drag on the MHE comparisons too much, but this show lacked both the clever writing, hummable score, and overall any interesting dynamic that might make it measure up. Let's begin by talking about the music, and I think it's a pretty big indictment of a show when you leave the theater and can barely remember any of its songs, even just by a simple melody. Perhaps its only somewhat memorable song was its opener, which admittedly was pretty funny! I found myself chuckling a bit.
But maybe this is also because this song leans a lot on the "silly British man, serious American woman" trope that could be entertaining enough for a single song, but it's another thing to base the entire show off of. Like, I feel like the sole characters in the show, Dougal and Robin, are just charicatures of themselves 90% of the time. They feel like a blended together paste of a dozen other characters, molded into one perfectly shaped stereotype. The first act largely followed the same set-up and punchline over and over. Was it mildly amusing sometimes? Yeah, sure. But it hardly endeared me to the character struggles or hardships, and when the supposedly more emotional second act hit, everything fell a bit flat.
The character's motivations, particularly Robin's, were questionable throughout, and the more I learned about her history with her sister and grandma, the less I understood where she was coming from. Maybe that's just a failure of empathy on my part? Maybe, but I don't think so. I don't feel like the show did a good job of making the audience feel why I should understand her actions.
Also, maybe I'm just a simpleton, but was anyone else expecting them to actually carry a big cake with two hands each like they were moving a dining table? I certainly did, so when it was just the characters carrying a couple of boxes...like I wanna see whacky slapstick antics with a show named like this! For goodness sake, the cake was delivered by the end of Act 1! The show's name was not representative of what I got!!!
I will say, at least, that at least Two Strangers had the decency to vary the ending a bit when it looked like there was an inevitable romance blooming. Because first of all, no way would these characters date each other, and secondly, I appreciated the show's final message of "there are people who will enter your life, change it for the better, and then leave, and that's okay." In a show that largely relied on tropes and stereotype, it was an impressively measured ending. I give the show props for that! It also made pretty decent use of its very limited set, so I was always intrigued to see what element of it would be used next. I still long for the elaborate sets of old, but this was a nice compromise.
I wouldn't call Two Strangers offensively bad or anything like that, it's more just...blah. When I saw that it was nominated for Best Musical this year, and even when a lot of people said it was one of the front runners to win, I kinda just accepted that 2026 was a lame year for new musicals. Who knows, maybe I'll like the others more! But it's a shame after the deluge of incredible stuff we got last year...it does seem to go like that, peaks and lulls and all that. Two Strangers offers a forgettable score and a sometimes nuanced, sometimes lazy, but overall safe book. It wasn't for me, I'm afraid.