I was pretty sure my dream was not like ‘The Sound of Music‘. It only felt like that when I woke up, with the association to the musical overlapping and replacing the details of the dream.
Imagine if the character of Maria was not a postulant, but a seminarian. A young, attractive seminarian but with the same carefree attitude, frolicking in the hills and singing. The would mean the rest of the nuns will also have a gender-switch, with the convent transforming into a seminary.
But, the rest of the characters retained their gender: Instead of Liesl, the male ‘Maria’ would have more interaction with Friedrich, the eldest male child. And Captain von Trapp was still a big burly father with a moustache, like the World Masterpiece Theater adaptation. Oh, yaoi fangirls probably have made several juicy scenes out of that pairing.
Thing is, I could easily picture the musical in my head with a male ‘Maria’ and it works. The gender-switch adds even more drama to the love story because — well, because.
Although I have to admit that changing ‘Maria’ to ‘Mario’ doesn’t really work, even in my head. A bigger problem would be how the priests in the seminary would accept ‘Maria’ falling for the captain without straining incredulity. However, a priest-counterpart of the Mother Superior singing ‘Climb Every Mountain’ will probably send chills down my spine.