The Tasty Sound of Broadway’s ‘Two Strangers’

New York, NY (February 9, 2026)—As its name implies, Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York) tells a small story in a big setting. The musical has been packing the Longacre Theatre on Broadway since it opened, but also filling the venue is a sizable L-Acoustics P.A. system, provided by PRG as part of a house system designed by sound designer Tony Gayle.

The show only features a cast of two, backed by five musicians seated upstage on a catwalk, so while the show’s intimate moments are more easily conveyed, the bigger, brassier scenes needed a sound design to match, bringing across the larger-than-life vibe of New York City. With that in mind, Gayle opted for L-Acoustics Kara II loudspeakers, which he had previously used on the show at an earlier out-of-town production at Boston’s ART theater.

“Kara gives me the subtlety that I need in theater—the transparency, the sound of it at lower level, and the clarity and detail,” Gayle explains. “It can also scale up when I need it to sound like a bigger box; it’s got that range. I like the way it’s very linear with L-Acoustics.”

He notes that at a low level, he can hear the detail and excitement in the songs, but that as the music gets louder, it still maintains the same sonic signature. “With a lot of other speaker manufacturers, when it gets loud, it starts to change tonally,” Gayle observes. “You have to use plug-ins and EQ just to tame certain elements, especially the vocals. For me, vocals have to be very linear, very across the board, because that is what is driving the story. That’s so important.”

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The P.A. is built around left and right main arrays, each comprised of 10 Kara II enclosures addressing the orchestra and mezzanine seating areas. Flown above those hangs are two arrays of five Kara II per side covering the upper balcony seating. Between those two upper arrays are three A Series loudspeaker hangs—three A10 Focus over two A10 Wide—interspersed with a pair of LF hangs both featuring a trio of SB18 subs. A pair of additional SB18 are located one per side behind and beneath the main Kara II arrays. Elsewhere, two-dozen coaxial X8 enclosures are used for fills, while 65 ultra-compact 5XT loudspeakers surround all three seating levels and line the left and right sides of the stage for 360-degree audio coverage. The entire system is powered and processed by 32 LA4X amplified controllers.

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“I’m a very pragmatic sound designer—I approach each show for what it needs,” Gayle says. “What I really care about is: Can I hear the lyrics, and can I hear the orchestrations and detail in the songs?” His sound design, then, is created with that focus on supporting the songs through judicious sound reinforcement, so that the music can best support the story. He notes, “It’s making sure that the songs all sit within the same world tonally, so you don’t feel like something just came out of nowhere.”