Over its first 12 years, Urbanite Theatre became known for producing edgy, serious-minded plays about emotionally difficult subjects that challenge the way we think about the world around us. Most of them likely wouldn’t have been produced at another Sarasota theater.

So it’s a delightful and welcome surprise to experience the opening of season 13 with the world premiere of Jenny Stafford’s “Ahoy-Hoy,” which is bold in a vastly different way. It reconsiders history as it has long been taught while it makes you laugh, often uproariously, from the opening scene to the outrageously campy finale.

As much as I have enjoyed many of its productions over the years, I don’t recall having this much fun at Urbanite since it opened. (I attended the show’s invited dress rehearsal two nights before the official Oct. 30 opening.)

The play is ostensibly about the invention of the telephone in 1876, which has long been credited to Alexander Graham Bell. Stafford’s script reminds us of the contributions of another inventor, Elisha Gray, a co-founder of Western Electric, who challenged Bell’s credit in court, claiming Bell stole his idea of the liquid transmitter required to make the phone work. Bell filed his patent application just three hours before Gray. 

In Stafford’s version, Gray is desperate to get the telephone patent both for the glory it could bring and the money he expects would follow. He has a large and growing family and is struggling to pay the bills. Bell, married to a wealthy woman, is almost nonchalant about the phone, focusing his time instead on other idiosyncratic ideas. Even the greatest inventors sometimes get it wrong.

In the end, Stafford questions whether it really matters who gets the credit. One couldn’t have done it without the other. The more important idea is how the telephone changed the world, and how it has been transformed far beyond what its inventors would ever recognize. You can imagine their stunned reactions to seeing a smartphone when the play shifts to today.

The story could have been crafted as some kind of historical fiction or a documentary about rival inventors racing to the patent office just hours apart with their creations. But she uses a far more creative approach.

In the lively production, inventively staged by Céline Rosenthal, Stafford employs just about every comedic theatrical style she can think of, mixing farce, satire, melodrama and a bit of slapstick while playing with time and anachronisms. More than once, Gray’s assistant, Cornelius, talks about ideas for his own inventions, like disposable rubber hospital gloves and the lightbulb that his boss dismisses as irrelevant. We now know otherwise.

And Stafford apparently encouraged casting that crosses gender and racial lines, so two women play male roles. I’m not sure what message that may send, but it adds to your appreciation of the performers’ skills.

The production features a cast of actors who have appeared in past Urbanite shows, led by Amber McNew as an almost manic and obsessive Gray, opposite Casey Murphy as the cocky and snobbish Bell. They are joined by Ben Williamson as Gray’s overworked and underpaid assistant Cornelius, and Ariel Blue as the patent officer Wilbur, who becomes a game show host before the evening ends.

McNew shows no fear in every frantic twist the playwright introduces. She looks boyishly masculine and comfortable with the large sideburns on her face matching the wavy wig on her head (designed by Jonathan Hall). McNew is s energetic, frantic, calculating and manipulative, and desperate enough for money to do anything. When McNew is called on to dance for a prize, she wins cheers from the audience with her frenetic, hip-hop moves.

In sharp contrast, Murphy revels in the nose-in-the-air attitude of Bell. He eases through a gym workout in a comical red and white outfit (designed by David Covach), while Gray struggles with the lightest weights. You’ve never seen an inventor with a more joyous expression as he works to breed sheep with four to six nipples to increase milk production. He tempts controversy with his strong views against deaf people learning sign language.

As Cornelius, Williamson is earnest and honest, until he’s forced to act otherwise, becoming a squeamish mess from nerves. He turns his rubber glove idea into a comical symbol of modern union protests today.

Blue, outfitted in a brassy three-piece suit, mutton chops and a wig, reminded me of Kenan Thompason in a 19th century period sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” She is calm and professional, but with a touch of a smirk behind her supportive comments, and she digs into her transformation as a game show host with great enthusiasm.

Jeff Weber has created an efficient set that stretches down the long middle of the theater space with the audience on either side, Gray’s lab on one side and Bell’s on the other, with lots of fun things happening in the middle. Michael Pasquini’s lighting helps to keep you focused and has some of its own playful elements.

It looks like no idea was off limits during rehearsals, as if one suggestion led to another comical discovery and then shaped by director and cast, leading to an often hilarious production that does make you ponder with a big smile on your face.

“Ahoy-Hoy” by Jenny Stafford. Directed by Céline Rosenthal. Reviewed Nov. 29 at Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. Through Nov. 29. Tickets are $52, $32 for for those 40 and younger and $5 for students. urbanitetheatre.com; 941-321-1397