But "Anne and Gilbert," which picks up the story of the iconic, red-haired orphan where the original "Anne of Green Gables" musical ends, has enjoyed two years of packed theatres and glowing reviews in Summerside, P.E.I. It's now set to move beyond the Island next year.
"It's one of the most successful musicals in the world, so there is something to live up to," says Webster, the show's producer. "There is some heavy lifting in the idea of musicalizing it on stage."
The idea to create a sequel to "Anne of Green Gables" was born in the early 1990s, when New York writer Jeff Hochhauser saw a production of the original musical during a visit to Charlottetown.
Hochhauser teamed up with songwriters Bob Johnston and Nancy White and over the next decade created a script based on Lucy Maud Montgomery's two subsequent books. They focus on the Anne's stubborn romance with Gilbert Blythe as the childhood rivals grow older.
Working with Webster, they shopped the script around to several theatres, including Charlottetown's Confederation Centre, where "Anne of Green Gables" has played since 1964.
But when the Confederation Centre and others passed, Webster says they decided to raise the money themselves and take on responsibility - and the risk-of staging a full-scale musical.
"It was kind of a really nutty idea to begin with, as a business idea, for our company to get behind this, because putting on musicals written by Canadians with Canadian source material - they either don't happen or get blown out of the water so fast that that's the end of them," says Webster.
It's a nutty idea that seems to have paid off.
The script saw its first off-Island production this summer, playing to sold-out audiences at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ont. Earlier this month, U.S. entertainment magazine Variety boldly predicted "Anne and Gilbert" would become "a standard on the Canadian music scene."
Next year, the 100th anniversary of the initial publication of "Anne of Green Gables," the new musical will branch out even further.
Webster says it's expected to be produced at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto, while another theatre company plans to tour the show to more than a dozen venues in Ontario. There's also a planned production in Japan and another in Pontiac, Mich.
Hochhauser says the rapid success - rare, he insists, for any new musical - eases his fears that "Anne and Gilbert" won't be given the same reception off P.E.I.
"The thing that was so gratifying about the success in Gananoque is that a lot of people said, 'Well, sure, it's a hit on Prince Edward Island, but everything "Anne of Green Gables" is going to go over on Prince Edward Island,"' says Hochhauser.
He adds it doesn't hurt that the show rides on the incredible popularity of the numerous books, movies, television programs and stage productions based on "Anne of Green Gables."
"She's sort of Canada's Tom Sawyer, and basically our job in writing the show was to be as true as we could to the original material, but also write it for a contemporary audience," he says.
"It is a love story, but it's a small town - it's hard not to recognize those characters, the whole world of everybody knowing everybody's business, and everybody at the same time really caring about everybody else. It's a beautiful story, and it's hard not to fall in love with it."
Rebecca Parent, the 20-year-old actress from Stratford, P.E.I., who has been playing the part of Anne this year in Summerside, says she's confident the story will still resonate with audiences elsewhere.
"It's really making people talk, so other people who don't have a chance to see it who are seeing all these articles in the paper and who are hearing all these great things about this show will actually be able to start buzzing about it as well," said Parent. She landed the lead role while taking time off from her musical theatre degree at Nova Scotia's Acadia University.
Growing up in Prince Edward Island, Parent says it was impossible not to be inundated with "Anne of Green Gables," but she admits she hadn't actually read the books until she was cast in the show. Still, it didn't take her long to be drawn into the story.
"Anne is such an interesting being, because people have so much fun watching her get into trouble and get out of trouble, and watch all of these interesting things happen to her," says Parent.
