I think I can, I think I can: four friends manage to take their off-Broadway production—called [title of show]—to the Great White Way just by saying it was going to happen

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ABOUT A MONTH BEFORE their autobiographical four-person musical begins performances on Broadway, the cast members of [title of show] are arguing over who their Sea" and the City counterparts are. Including me, director Michael Berresse, and musical director Larry Pressgrove, that makes five gay men and two "honorary gay" straight women on one sectional sofa in midtown Manhattan.

"I'm the Samantha? Have you hung around this one lately?" deadpans Susan Blackwell, gesturing to her costar Heidi Blickenstaff.

"Now let's do The Golden Girls!" pleads composer-lyricist and star Jeff Bowen, who (like everyone) plays a variation of himself with the same name. "Susan, you're so the Sophia."

"We actually want to make T-shirts for [title of show] fans that say, like, 'I'm a Jeff' or 'I'm a Hunter,'" interrupts star Hunter Bell, who also wrote the book.

"I think it's a brilliant idea," agrees Blickenstaff. "People want to be us."

She's teasing, of course, but far from wrong; in certain theater circles, the tight-knit [title of show] gang is the New York City quartet to emulate. After all, theirs is an inspirational story of a little show that could: an original musical about "two nobodies" writing an original musical about "two nobodies" writing an original musical. In roughly 90 minutes, it chronicles its own evolution and trajectory from a last-minute entry in 2004's New York Musical Theatre Festival to an acclaimed 2006 off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theatre and finally to Broadway, where it kicks off the new season with a July 17 opening at the Lyceum Theatre.

In addition to a trio of Obie awards and placement on various year-end top 10 lists, the Vineyard production of [title of show] earned a 2006 GLAAD Media Award nomination for Best New York Theater. "That made me really proud," Bell recalls, "because it's a play with gay characters, but it's not really about that; that's just an aspect of Jeff and Hunter. So it is a gay play, but it's not a gay play. Not disparaging other pieces that explore that, but it's not a show about coming out or AIDS or even a gay relationship. It's just about these two hopefully awesome gay guys and their lady friends."

These awesome gay guys also happen to be extremely theater-obsessed. Reviewing the show off-Broadway, esteemed critic Charles Isherwood of The New York Times began with the following summons: "Calling all show queens! Or, if you prefer to be more formally addressed, may I have your attention, please, devoted aficionados of musical theater? Have I got a show for you!" Yet while the piece is indeed chock-full of obscure theater references and enough stage-diva shout-outs to make Patti LuPone's head spin, Bowen and Bell seemed to signal the birth of a new, more masculine breed of show queen who dropped f bombs, had sweaty armpits, cracked fart jokes, and frequently referred to masturbation; in other words, show queens for the Superbad set.

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"We just set out to be ourselves," Bell insists, "and that's what I love about Judd Apatow and those guys: They are being their specific selves. It wasn't like 'take back the night,, where we set out to make liking musicals cool. It's just about not being afraid or embarrassed to say who you are and what you really love, and that is cool."

"What we tend to associate with a 'show queen' is this big personality who has a bunch of shit to say about something, but we don't do that," says Bowen, affecting a sassy, snappish air. "A lot of the old-school show queens that I know don't really like our show. It made us laugh when we'd get negative responses from the people we were sort of reaching out to. It's kind of like the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons: His passion comes off in such a negative, unappealing way, you immediately associate comic books with overweight, slovenly people who are nasty."

"I love mincing show queens, but I don't like bitchy show queens, and there's a big, big difference," notes Berresse, only a bit older than his 30-something cast at 43. "Those people ultimately didn't react well to the masturbation jokes and silly stuff because they come from an era where they treasure discreetness. These are people who don't believe in equal rights because they feel it takes away what's special about them."

Berresse, a longtime performer himself who recently vacated the role filled by Mario Lopez in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, also believes that [title of show] could've been just as successful had its leads been more "show-queeny," or stereotypically effeminate. "It's more important to be honest and vulnerable," he says. "If you're a mincing, crazy, flaming queen, but you're still able to drop in, put everything aside, and really share the truth, then I don't care what you are. That's good storytelling."