A DELIGHTFULLY CHEESY EXPERIENCE.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

THE AMISH, homosexuals, Eastern European immigrants, ruthless fast- rising corporate golden boys ...

Aforementioned is a partial list of targets that David and Amy Sedaris line up like so many bowling pins awaiting a big honkin' medicine ball to take them down. Oh - alcoholics, too.

The play is ``The Book of Liz,'' a cheerfully ribald but not particularly gutsy bit of fun that the Sedaris siblings - who rather immodestly bill themselves as The Talent Family - could have dashed off in a single booze-soaked weekend. The play's L.A. premiere, directed by Darin Anthony for the Blank Theatre, features Ann Magnuson playing a Squeamish (it's a sect) cheese ball specialist who leaves her closed world to experience life on the outside.

Now, when you've got characters named Sister Constance Butterworth, Reverend Tollhouse and Brother Nathaniel Brightbee; when your buck-toothed heroine sweats profusely and ends up employed at the Plymouth Crock Family restaurant; when a key piece of costumery is a Mr. Peanut outfit bearing a more than passing resemblance to a prophylactic, you're not going to be giving George Bernard Shaw a run for his wit. Nonetheless, Anthony and a quite game cast slide friskily through 90 minutes. The odyssey of Sister Elizabeth Donderstock is no epic, but by thunder, it's her odyssey and it just might lead her wayward Clusterhaven brethren to a kind of enlightenment.

Sister Elizabeth (played with not too much innocence by Magnuson), is forced to hit the road when the pious Reverend Tollhouse (Mike Genovese) decides to shake up routines within rustic Clusterhaven's Squeamish sect. A handsome brother from an adjoining village (Jeff Witzke) is brought in to improve the efficiency of the manufacture of the community's signature cheese balls (traditional and smoky flavored) hitherto overseen by Sister Elizabeth. Ever devoted, Sister Elizabeth writes out her recipe and then takes a powder.

Outside the Squeamish community, Sister Liz befriends a randy Ukrainian husband and wife (Johanna McKay and Sam Zeller) and later ends up as the star waitress - and potential management material - at the Plymouth Crock. Things aren't going so well, meanwhile, back at Clusterhaven, where frustrated Brother Brightbee can't seem to get the cheese ball recipe right, and business is dropping off.

The Sedarises have written the main characters (Elizabeth, Reverend Tollhouse, Brother Brightbee) as the straight men, while quick-change artists like Laura Pruden and Matt Crabtree - in multiple roles - get all the really juicy comic business. Still, Magnuson, genuine and legitimately pious, delivers a Liz to root for, while Genovese's ramrod-stiff Tollhouse will get his comeuppance as well as a kind of redemption.

Those who tamper foolishly with Sister Liz and the cheese balls of Clusterhaven should be so lucky.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

THE BOOK OF LIZ - Three and one half stars

Where: 2nd Stage Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through June 5.

Tickets: $25. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: The Sedarises' humor is light but true.

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Photo:

Ann Magnuson's nun, left, explores life after cheese balls with Sam Zeller and Johanna McKay's randy Ukranians in ``The Book of Liz.''