This fall, Cascades Theatrical Company will present the world premiere of “It’s Only Money,” a new musical that’s been more than 25 years in the making. Auditions for the production, which is being directed by Lilli Ann Linford-Foreman, will be held Wednesday at Central Oregon Community College in Bend (see “If you go”).

Linford-Foreman calls the musical a fun, timely story “about shenanigans on Wall Street.”

“It’s got a good love story in it, plenty of betrayal and underhanded dealings, all held together by a mysterious narrator,” she says.

Back in the 1980s, songwriter and musician David Forrest was working for Citibank in New York City, the setting of the musical, when he conceived the storyline for a musical about love and legal wrongdoing on Wall Street. He was about six songs into the project when he met writer Lee Charles Kelley, who began collaborating on the book and lyrics with Kelley for what would become “It’s Only Money.”

About a year later, the first draft was complete. “My entertainment attorney in New York sent us to see a couple who invested in Broadway shows,” says Forrest, who moved to Bend in 2005. “So one day I hauled my keyboards and other instruments up to this penthouse apartment, and we started doing effectively a mini ‘backer’s audition,’ ” in which songs from a potential show are performed for potential financial investors in a production.

After the fifth song, “They said, ‘Stop. This is great. You guys have no idea what you’ve got here,’ ” Forrest says. What they needed was for Forrest and Kelley to get a staged reading on video.

Time passed, during which Forrest moved to Vermont, where he met actor Susan Marie Snyder, a cast member of the old TV soap opera “Santa Barbara.” She was familiar with Forrest’s music and had heard he’d written a musical.

With her help, a staged reading (an on-stage reading with minimal production, costumes, etc.) of the third draft of “It’s Only Money” was held at a small Vermont theater in 1996.

The evening of the event, a snowstorm deposited 3 feet of snow.

“I’m thinking, ‘Nobody’s going to come.’ Well, apparently, buzz around town had gotten pretty strong,” Forrest says. “They were turning people away.”

Forrest played keyboards during the reading, for which he and the principals had only a short amount of time to rehearse. However, old scenery from the theater’s prop room, including a small Empire State Building, lent the reading a New York ambiance, and all of the cast had thought to wear clothing appropriate to their character.

“Somehow, all this came together the right way,” Forrest says. The crowd gave the musical a standing ovation, and Forrest asked a friend to get copies made of the tape of the show.

From there, things began to go less well.

After he received his copy of the videotape, Forrest popped it in a VCR only to discover it cut off at the beginning of the second act.

“I’m going, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Forrest says.

When he called his writing partner about the setback, Kelley had worse news for him: The only electronic copy of their script was lost when Kelley’s computer crashed.

“Remember, this is 1996,” notes Forrest. Kelley had saved a back-up on floppy disc, but that was lost when Kelley’s dog, Freddy, knocked over a vase, damaging the floppy.

What of the scripts used for the reading? According to Forrest, in those days, “it cost $35, $40 to reproduce the scripts, so (the theater) said they owned them.”

“I go, ‘OK, this is a sign from the universe or something,’ ” says Forrest, who later moved to San Diego and, in 2005, to Bend.

Two years ago this month, he attended a wedding in Central Park, where he met up with his old Vermont friend, who, unbeknownst to Forrest, had made an extra videotaped copy of “It’s Only Money” back in 1996.

Or as Forrest puts it, “He snaked a copy for himself.”

At the wedding, “He pulls out of his knapsack this DVD,” which turned out to be a copy of the staged reading of “It’s Only Money.”

“I say, ‘Wow, that’s incredible! But what’s the difference? It stops at the beginning of the second act.’ ”

“He goes, ‘No, David, the guy who did the digital transfer was able to get the whole thing off.’ ”

Still there were no existing copies of the script, and “the music is all in my head,” Forrest says.

When he told his old partner, Kelley, about the find, Kelley was reluctant to begin transcribing the whole thing from the DVD.

It turned out they wouldn’t have to. Forrest’s buddy wasn’t the only one to boost something from the 1996 reading: Forrest later learned that a box he’d left behind at his sister’s New York home during his West Coast move contained a copy of the script from the Vermont theater.

“I must have kept one as a memento,” Forrest says. When he took it to a local printer in Bend, he was charged just $14 for a scanned Microsoft Word copy.

“It’s Only Money” was back in business. He sent it to Kelley, and the two began working on another draft — again.

Not long after all this, Forrest attended a CTC production of “Oliver!” at Greenwood Playhouse in early 2011.

“The production values were incredible,” he says.

Six weeks later, he worked up the nerve to approach Lana Shane, the theater’s operations manager, and asked if she had 15 minutes to hear his story.

By the end of it, she asked to see the script and DVD. He was hoping for a two-night run during the 2011-2012 season — performances that, yes, he would have filmed — and would love to see it directed by Linford-Foreman.

Instead, CTC’s play selection committee wanted to do a three-week run for this upcoming 2012-2013 season. Forrest would have to wait just a little longer, but he’d have the director he wanted, not to mention a full cast and staging.

Though the script being used for the November production is his and Kelley’s fifth draft, the songs are the same ones the two wrote so many years ago. Among them are a reggae song, uptempo tunes and ballads.

“I started this thing over 25 years ago,” Forrest says, laughing. “For some reason, it’s come back.”

If you go

What: Auditions for “It’s Only Money”

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Pence 28, 2600 N.W. College Way, Bend

Cost: Free; come prepared with a song

Contact: 541-389-0803