Back in the winter, when I was preparing to launch Foss Forward, I described the concept to a friend of mine. “It will be about movies and music and sports, that sort of thing,” I explained. “What about the theater?” my friend asked. “Well, sure,” I said, taken slightly aback. “I could write about the theater.” What I meant was: If I ever go to the theater, which I never do, I could write about it. If I wanted.

The truth is, some of my friends seem to think this blog is like an in-demand movie service, where they can order up posts on things they like. “You should write more about local art events,” they’ll say. Or, “How about something on Wimbledon?” I generally shrug off these requests, since what I happen to be doing or thinking about determines what I write, but this weekend, as I prepared to take in a production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “State Fair,” I thought: “I could write about the theater.” I’m not a big fan of musicals, and I’m not a big fan of fairs (an aversion I’ve chronicled on this blog in the past), and for a moment I feared I had made a terrible mistake. A musical about a fair? Blech. But there I was, sitting in the fifth row at the Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, N.H., surrounded by local teenagers and grown-ups twice my age. (“Are you under 18?” the cashier asked, when I purchased my ticket.) I’d grown up in this town, but I couldn’t have felt more out of place, and it was too late to flee. How, I wondered, did I get here?

The answer is simple: I was traveling through New Hampshire and needed a place to stay. When I e-mailed my high school friend Steve to see whether I could crash at his house on Saturday night, he replied that I could, but that he and his wife were performing in the North Country Community Theatre’s production of “State Fair” that night. Was I still interested? I was definitely interested — watching Steve play the roles of pig farmer and police chief sounded like a ton of fun. At least, in theory. But when the curtains rose, and the music began, I had some serious doubts. I mean, I hate “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma,” and I’m not so fond of “Brigadoon” and “Grease,” either. On the whole, I don’t like corny, wholesome stories where people burst into song and sing about finding their true love. The musicals I like tend to be violent and tragic (“West Side Story”) or full of action (“The Sound of Music”), and in college we used to mock the whole concept of musical theater by imagining what it would be like if there was a day-long holiday called Musical Day, where everyone sang and danced as if they were in a musical. Because when you think about it, musical theater is deeply strange, with plots and characters that inhabit a magical realm that bears no resemblance to the real world. I suppose that’s part of the appeal, but I can only take so much whimsy and synchronized dancing.

“State Fair” is as corny as they come. But you know what? I really enjoyed it, and not just because the pig farmer quartet was hysterical, or because the show contained lines like “I’ll meet you at the ice cream crank-off!” (Steve’s brother Greg was also a lot of fun as Wayne, one of the leads, and Steve’s wife made her stage debut in a bit part). “State Fair,” for all of its hokum, contained one of the only characters I’ve ever been able to relate to in a musical: Pat Gilbert, the cynical reporter sent to cover the Iowa State Fair. When Gilbert complained that fairs are boring and lame, and that he hates covering them, I nodded my head with understanding. Of course, Gilbert falls deeply in love with the pig farmer’s daughter; his moment of crisis occurs when the Chicago Tribune calls (“This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!”) and he ditches the pig farmer’s daughter to interview for his dream job. Of course, “State Fair” takes place in a bygone era when big metropolitan dailies sought to hire experienced reporters, rather than trim 10 percent of their staff through layoffs and buyouts, but it’s a fantasy I was happy to go along with, because Gilbert gets the job and the girl, and so it’s something of a win-win, to use a cliche that all newspapers should ban from their pages.

Unlike Gilbert, I’ve never fallen in love at the fair; if I had, maybe I wouldn’t hate it so much. Since watching “State Fair” I've been reevaluating my aversion to musicals, and not just because Steve might install a karaoke machine in his new house and build a small amphitheater in his yard, thus bringing new meaning to the term home theater. I left the Opera House with the urge to sing and dance, and I can’t even remember the last time I felt that way. So maybe a little corniness is OK every now and again, after all.