Two decades ago, Forte Musical Theatre’s Joe Slabe and Matt Board wrote the music and lyrics to what would eventually become a mega-hit musical worldwide.

The antics of a community theatre group trying to put on a musical production about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and failing horribly doing so, delighted audiences and took the musical to Broadway and the West End—where it still runs to this day.

Now for the 20th anniversary of the play, and 15 years after it last ran in Calgary, Forte Musical Theatre is bringing Austentatious back for Calgary audiences on another auspicious calendar date, the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.

“Twenty years ago, four of my classmates and I thought we’d write a fun little musical about a theatre troupe doing their own, highly comic version of Pride and Prejudice. We didn’t know that Austentatious would take us on a crazy ride over the next six years from London, to Philadelphia, to New York and Calgary before getting published and done in theatres all over,” said Joe Slabe, Forte Musical Theatre Guild’s Artistic Director.

“It was also the second show Forte Musical Theatre ever did, and was so popular with audiences that they’ve asked us to mount it again ever since.”

He said that now with those pair of anniversary dates it seemed like the right time to bring it back to Calgary.

“Plus, with everything that’s going on in the world, I think all of us could use a good laugh right now,” Slabe said.

That laughter is exactly what audiences can expect to get, said Elinor Holt, who is playing Jess in the remounted production and was a cast member for the original run in Calgary.

“Austentatious is one of those fantastic plays-within-a-play. A lot like Noises Off, or a play that’s making the rounds right now is The Play That Goes Wrong, which Calgary audiences would have seen at Theatre Calgary last season,” Holt said.

“Unlike those other two, this one is a full-on musical. It’s kind of about a rinky dink bunch of actors trying to put on their rinky dink show and and things go wrong in the best kind of, most comical sort of way.”

Get jazzed about a musical that goes wrong

The humour to be found in the foibles of the Georgian-Era-landed gentry continues to amuse, said Holt.

“People love a good love story, and it’s so I think it’s even better when it’s a love story that some people revere so highly, that goes so wrong,” Holt said.

Even better when it’s the Cochrane Ranche Amateur Players with a clueless director, diva leading lady, and an overlooked veteran stage actor try to hit the high notes to a decidedly un-Georgian jazzy score.

“We know that there’s going to be a diva. We know there’s going to be a handsome lead we suspect, or maybe we hope, that there’s going to be a show crush. Maybe then a show crush that goes badly. In amongst that, there are the people that are just trying really hard to just do their job and actually put on the best play possible and they keep getting thwarted,” Holt said.

“You’re going to see yourself up on that stage. You’re going to have those moments of recognition where you either see yourself, or you see a friend of yours and it reminds you of an experience that you once had. It’s very relatable, and it’s also very funny done in 5-6-7-8 time.”

Although the mise en abyme of absurdity has become quite popular again, Holt said that in 2005 Austentatious was one of the original Calgary shows that was garnering interest in the format. Noises Off being produced in 1982, and the Play That Goes Wrong from 2012.

“It’s so interesting how people looked at The Play That Goes Wrong, and went ‘oh, wow, this is so exciting and new.’ It’s like, no, this kind of theatre has been going on for a long time,” Holt said.

“Years ago, back before Vertigo was Vertigo, they were the Pleiades Theatre. We did a series of shows called The Farndale Avenue Housing Estates Women’s Theatrical Guild Presents. It was about this community theatre group, mostly women who were putting on shows and they would go wrong.”

Holt said that if audiences like the absurd, or perhaps even the current adaptation of Pride and Prejudice done by Kate Hamill that was staged in Edmonton at the Citadel Theatre, then this would be the play to see.

Austentatious runs from April 8 through 19, at the Beddington Theatre Arts Centre.

Tickets are on sale at www.fortemusical.ca.