Brian Hill, left, is the writer and Neil Bartram, the composer and lyricist, for The Story of My Life. (bertramandhill.com)The Story of My Life, a two-actor musical written by Canadians Neil Bartram and Brian Hill, makes its Broadway debut on Thursday night.

The show, which centres on a lifelong friendship between two men, premiered in Toronto in 2006 at the Berkeley Theatre.

Bartram wrote the music and lyrics and Hill wrote the script for the musical, which has been refined with the help of Tony Award-winning director Richard Maltby Jr.

For Bartram and Hill, who have lived in New York for the past six years, the opening marks a debut of one of their works on Broadway.

Will Chase and Malcolm Gets star as the two friends, with Chase playing a writer who leaves his hometown, only to find that every story he writes has a character just like his friend, Alvin Kelby, who stayed behind to run a bookstore.

They portray the pair from age six to 35 as Chase reflects on their friendship.

An Associated Press reviewer called the work "a heartfelt little musical that has the courage of its sweet-tempered, low-key convictions."

AP's Michael Kuchwara had praise for the performances and compared Bartram's songs to the work of Stephen Sondheim, saying the "lyrics are nimble, often intricate, but never too complicated for his spare melodic lines."

Gets and Chase also starred in a run of the show in Connecticut in the fall of 2008.

The show began previews at the Booth Theatre on Feb. 3 and is opening Thursday. The show's website also encourages people to tell stories of their lifelong friendships.

Hill, who grew up in Kitchener, Ont., and Bartram, from Burlington, Ont., are working on a stage work based on Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage and also wrote Somewhere in the World, which ran for five seasons in Charlottetown.

They met while playing in Forever Plaid in Toronto in the early 1990s. Hill also has a string of directing credits.