By TAMMY LA GORCE

THERE seems to be a severe strain of latter-day Beatlemania circulating at the State Theater in New Brunswick.

On Friday, the theater, which seats 1,800, will host the Jersey Summer Beatles Bash, at which the Smithereens will play their album “Meet the Smithereens,” a song-for-song cover of “Meet the Beatles” released earlier this year on Koch Records.

Also on the bill is the musician and professional Beatlemaniac Glen Burtnik, who is assembling a batch of Beatle-fluent friends, including the former Wings drummer Steve Holly, to perform the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” from start to finish.

Three months later, on Nov. 17, the Fab Faux, a New York-based group that Rolling Stone magazine recently called “the greatest Beatles cover band,” is scheduled to deliver renditions of songs ranging from hit singles like “Paperback Writer” to “Revolution 9,” the experimental and notoriously hard-to-play song from “The White Album.”

And next March, by which time a Beatles fan’s itch to hear their music replicated live should have been scratched, Rain, a California-based band that puts on a career-spanning theatrical show with costumes and set changes, will set up shop at the theater for one night.

All this comes on top of Rain’s recent eight-day stand in Atlantic City and the Fest for Beatle Fans held in March in Secaucus.

“There seems to be an insatiable appetite for the Beatles,” said Andrew Fishman, programming manager for the State Theater. “We get a consistently strong audience for Beatles shows.” That would account for the return of the Fab Faux, who will be making their fourth visit to the theater, as well as that of Rain, which sold out a show last year.

Pat DiNizio, lead singer of the Smithereens, said: “Jersey is definitely Beatle-friendly. It seems like it won’t go away.”

Mostly, Mr. DiNizio said, an uptick in Beatles interest can be traced to troubled times. “People turn to the music that gives them comfort,” he said. “Obviously there’s a need for this music right now.”

It’s possible that what Mr. DiNizio called the Smithereens’ “huge fan base” in New Jersey played a role. “Maybe it spurred some people to go back and listen to the Beatles,” he said.

Mr. Burtnik, a New Brunswick native, has played the part of Paul McCartney off and on in Beatles-tribute outfits since starring in the Broadway show “Beatlemania” in 1978 and is currently filling in for a Fab Faux member on hiatus. “I kind of wonder when the bottom’s going to drop out,” he said, referring to the band’s music.

But then he suggested that maybe it won’t.

“Sometimes there are classic musics that resonate with generations, but Beatles music goes one step further,” he said. “It keeps regenerating.”

Hal Korin, president of HaloJen Productions in New Brunswick, the company behind the Fab Faux’s annual performances at the State Theater, cited the 40th anniversary of “Sgt. Pepper’s” and the continuing Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas show “Love,” which is set to Beatles recordings, as two possible factors in maintaining high interest in the group’s music.

Fab Faux’s appeal — Mr. Korin is expecting a sellout show in November — is directly related to its members’ résumés, he said. Will Lee is a Grammy-winning bassist who plays with Paul Shaffer on “Late Show With David Letterman,” and the guitarist Jimmy Vivino appears nightly on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” as part of the Max Weinberg 7.

Local boosterism could also be at work. “Two of the guys are from Jersey,” Mr. Korin said, including Mr. Vivino, a Paterson native whose brother Floyd Vivino is better known to state residents as TV’s “Uncle Floyd.” “That might be part of why they’re popular here.”

The Jersey Summer Beatles Bash, with the Smithereeens and Glen Burtnik & Friends, will be presented Friday at 8 p.m. at the State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. Information: (732) 246-7469 or statetheatrenj.org.

The Jersey Summer Beatles Bash, with the Smithereeens and Glen Burtnik & Friends, will be presented Friday at 8 p.m. at the State Theater, 15 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. Information: (732) 246-7469 or statetheatrenj.org