Heterosexual Life Partners/Theatre

"Brick: Why can't exceptional friendship, real, real, deep, deep friendship! between two men be respected as something clean and decent without being thought of as--
 * Brick and Skipper in the backstory of Tennessee Williams' play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof - that is, if you believe Brick when he vehemently denies they did "sodomy" together:

Big Daddy: It can, it is, for God's sake.

Brick: -Fairies..."


 * A Year With Frog and Toad: Frog and Toad were always good friends in the original kids' books, but The Musical elevates them comfortably to life partners at the very least. They even invade each others dreams to sing about how much they like each other. Twice. ("That's funny, you've been in all my dreams too...")
 * Estragon and Vladimir from Waiting for Godot. They even have pet names for each other and put off killing themselves because of the slight possibility that one of them would live and be left alone. They were going to hang themselves so they could get erections. There is so much Ho Yay in this play, Wikipedia even has it's own entry on it.
 * Avenue Q: Rod and Nicky, who are CaptainErsatzes of Bert and Ernie respectively. "We live together, as close as people can get / We've been the best of buddies ever since the day we met!" Which segues, just a song later, into "If you were gay / That'd be okay / I mean, 'cause hey / I like you anyway / Because you see / If it were me / I would feel free to say / That I was gay / But I'm not gay."
 * Subverted, as

"Ron: Favorite way to say "red wines" in a German accent?
 * and are at least this by the end of A Very Potter Musical.
 * They were gay through and through. Very gay.
 * YMMV on that, as it was entirely Played for Laughs.
 * Harry and Ron, though, firmly hit this trope in both musicals:

Both: Red Vines!

Ron: (hugging Harry) Oh my god, where have you been all my life?

Harry: In a cupboard under some stairs!"


 * Prof. Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.
 * Mark Cohen and Roger Davis in Rent. Their duet, "What You Own" comes complete with Manly Tears and a big climatic Man Hug. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it instrumental reprise of "I Should Tell You" during their fight in "Goodbye Love" is also heartwarming.
 * Oscar and Felix in The Odd Couple.
 * Mame and Vera in Auntie Mame. The musical version gives them a duet about their relationship, "Bosom Buddies."
 * Elphaba and G(a)linda from Wicked
 * Kate and Queenie from The Wild Party, although they don't look it
 * Janet van der Graaf and The Drowsy Chaperone
 * Buddy and Ben in Follies
 * Proteus and Valentine from Two Gentlemen of Verona, and (more humorously) their respective servants, Launce and Speed.
 * Elder Price and Elder Cunningham at the end of The Book of Mormon.
 * Enjolras and Grantaire from Les Misérables. This is somewhat more evident in the musical than in the book, probably because of how it's usually staged.
 * Most fanfiction slashes them, but the evidence points more to best friends.
 * YMMV to the extreme on that one (i.e., that the evidence points more to best friends). At least half the fandom can provide serious, significant, historical and textually-based evidence for their being canon-implied gay for each other (starting with the homsexuality coded via classical references to figures like Orestes and Pylades, heading into more explicitly canon territory with the book's acknowledging that Grantaire "loves" Enjolras, reaching a turning point when the two, and then going off into fan-speculation based on interpretations of their motives throughout the text from there ...). It's the kind of thing you could write a serious academic paper, if not a thesis, on.
 * Then again, Mizzies will slash Enjolras with anyone.
 * This was all made worse by the fact that the two characters were played by real life best friends, Ramin Karimloo and Hadley Fraser, in the 25th Anniversary Concert.
 * When all the other students walk off with their girlfriends at the end of "Do You Hear The People Sing", these two leave with their arms around each other.
 * Hamlet and Horatio.
 * Mercutio and Benvolio in R&J.
 * Mercutio and Romeo are arguably even closer.
 * Lucentio and Tranio from The Taming of the Shrew. Tranio is "as secret and as dear" to Lucentio "as Anna to the Queen of Carthage was", and he'll do anything to help Lucentio.