Bro!

We certainly don't know much about musical theater around here, but we know that like Hair or Porgy and Bess, writing a musical about a subculture is a terrific way to bring attention to their unique values, attitudes, and folkways. Or better yet, to mock them! With that in mind, it's time somebody wrote a musical about bros, the young people who populate our reality TV shows and who vomit off the railings of our apartment complexes, yet remain invisible to the art world. I refuse to believe that "Animal House" is a sufficient treatment of such a broad subject. Surely bro culture has made meaningful progress since the Carter Administration.

I'm not sympathetic to what is basically a very dumb youth movement, but bros are people like the rest of us. We may not like to admit it, but don't we all like beer? Although their baseball caps and polo shirts may seem off-putting, all of us can appreciate the unique narrative conflict their lifestyle implies. What is drinking yourself into a stupor, after all, but Man versus Self? When a bro seduces a bro-ette, it hardly needs a very skilled playwright to bring out the hostility. Whichever way you look, you can hardly deny that bros have problems, and problems means stories.

The possible settings are as numberless and varied as the bros themselves: An apartment littered with pizza boxes and decorated with flattened beer cases, the quad of a state university, or the bleachers of a football game. And from the opening of Act 2, which finds two bros scribbling on their passed-out friend with Sharpies (Song: What a fag!) to the climactic party that ends with the cops being called, there would be plenty of engaging scenes. Playing off the homosexual subtext of bro culture might seem cheap, but I think it could provide some of the piece's most tender moments (Song: You're my bro, slurred boisterously in Act 1, then meaningfully reprised in the final act, or maybe Don't leave me, bro!)

The chances of a musical success might be hindered by the fact that bro music is universally considered terrible. A talented composer might be able to fashion something that sounded bro-ish yet listenable, but he would be unable to capture its main feature: An incredible loudness that obliterates any possibility of conversation. The theater might not seem like a good venue for a musical tradition that prides itself on thumping bass, forgettable lyrics and little discernable melody, but the existence of atonal opera suggests that the boundaries of musical theater are set far wider than it may seem. And not to knock musicals in general, but the modern theatergoer is simply in no position to complain if Bro the Musical turns out to be unlistenable. Compared to what, we might ask.

I'd write the book myself, but, as I'm sure you've noticed, my talent for narrative fiction is limited. So I'm going to relinquish the idea to the budding playwrights out there. All you need is actors who can vomit on cue and a way to make the whole theater smell like Axe, and you'll have a license to print money.