Sedarises’ perfectly cheesy tale

It all comes down, really, to a matter of taste.

The story that siblings Amy and David Sedaris tell in “The Book of Liz” centers on the secret ingredient that only Sister Elizabeth Donderstock can supply to the cheese balls so popular with buyers outside her cloistered religious community, and audience reaction hinges on the ability to savor the tale’s outrageously odd sense of humor.

There’s a big enough Sedaris fan base, certainly, to ensure that the show’s Los Angeles premiere, by the Blank Theatre Company, will be enthusiastically received. David’s essay collections, including “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” are widely relished, and Amy’s projects, especially the deranged sitcom “Strangers With Candy,” are catnip to her devotees. What anyone else might make of this foolishness is another matter.

No question, though -- the Blank production perfectly captures the Sedarises’ sensibility. In this, the presentation is greatly abetted by Ann Magnuson. Her Sister Donderstock is over-earnest and awkward (think: Amy’s Jerri Blank in an Amish bonnet and apron). Yet her pure, sweet, bucktoothed smile hints at something more.

Sister Donderstock chafes at the general lack of appreciation for women’s contributions to her religious community, yet she’s contented enough until a takeover of her cheese ball operation. Displaced and hurt, she flees the only life she has ever known.

The squabbling couple (Johanna McKay and Sam Zeller) and the detoxing gay guy (Tom Lenk) she encounters outside may not, at first, seem to be shining examples of secular life. Yet she readily accepts them for who they are, and they, in turn, help her to realize her unique place in the world.

For the longest time, the cartoonish goings-on -- performed by a cast of nine, under Darin Anthony’s direction -- seem the slightest stuff on Earth. Then one character, then another, spout genuine tears, and you realize how vibrantly human they’ve been all along.

-- Daryl H. Miller

“The Book of Liz,” 2nd Stage Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 5. $25. (323) 661-9827. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

Privacy rites in the Big Apple

Only connect? It’s never that simple, as the toxically interconnected New Yorkers of James Christy Jr.’s “Never Tell” learn. At its best, in director Lindsay Allbaugh’s assured production, Christy’s roundelay of secrets, lies and videotape captures both the visceral horror of violated privacy and the exhilaration of blowing down well-fortified personal boundaries.

The play’s demolition genius is the loquacious, eerily magnetic slacker Hoover, in a born-to-play-him performance by Tito Ortiz. Stomping smilingly through both lives of a quartet of tenuously bonded friends -- computer nerd Manny (Christopher Game), basket-case venture capitalist Liz (Gia McGinley), taciturn Chelsea gallery manager Will (Robert Foster) and his high-strung banker wife, Anne (Marisa O’Brien)-- the glibly frank Hoover is the most lively and original character.

After placing this blissful spoiler in the path of his characters’ conflicting interests and hinting at the barely concealed lies on which they’ve built their lives, Christy’s second act unravels in ways that are both predictable and improbable. Will’s art dealings, and the dark, self-serving muse behind them, are particularly hard to swallow and seem to belong in a different play.

But even when his dramaturgy grows dubious, Christy’s distinctive voice -- both sharp and searching -- remains clear, and the actors, particularly the pent-up Game, dig in with relish. A series of well-wrought monologues about the leads’ youthful sexual initiations get intent readings, with Bosco Flanagan’s hand-held lights giving them a campfire-confessional feeling. And Allbaugh handles the play’s abundant scene changes across Joel Daavid’s versatile, gallery-worthy set with telling bursts of alt-rock -- yet another well-placed element in this promising if imperfect effort.

-- Rob Kendt

“Never Tell,” Elephant Theatre Company, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Fridays to Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 4. $15. (323) 960-4429. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

*

Synge’s ‘Saints’ in rare revival

“Ah, there’s a power of villainy walking the world,” says blind Mary Doul (Jacque Lynn Colton), “among them that do be gadding around with their gaping eyes, and their sweet words, and they with no sense in them at all.” Mary’s husband, Martin (Michael Earl Reid), also sightless since birth, sadly replies, “It’s the truth, maybe, and yet I’m told it’s a grand thing to see a young girl walking the road.”

These pre-20th century Irish indigents are about to see what they only imagine, and their heretical travails drive “The Well of the Saints.” John Wellington Synge’s pixilated parable about how Mary and Martin’s idyll ends when a saint restores their sight receives a spare, tickling revival at the Celtic Arts Center.

“Saints,” Synge’s first three-act play, premiered in 1905 at the same Abbey Theatre that his “Riders to the Sea” had stunned in 1903. Audiences rioted over his 1907 “Playboy of the Western World,” and “Saints” too sparked controversy over depictions of mountain people and the Douls’ reactions to divine intervention.

Director Robyn Heller briskly honors these aspects without gloss. Designs are serviceable, notably Jennifer Michaud’s rough-textured costumes and Dan Conroy’s set pieces.

The piquant cast spurs the show, led by Colton and Reid, both wonderful. Matt Foyer’s holy man, Jennifer Ruckman’s Molly Byrne and John McKenna’s blacksmith seem pulled from Synge’s pages. Deidre Moore and Rick Crawford offer pert support.

One questions the intermission, which halts the hubbub of this brief work. Occasionally, the intimate authenticity defeats audibility and articulation. Yet this is a representative reading of a seldom-seen classic, and Synge fanciers should flock.

-- David C. Nichols

“The Well of the Saints,” the Celtic Arts Center, 4843 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Valley Village. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends June 5. $15. (818) 760-8322. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

*

This ‘Threepenny Opera’ lacks bite

“Life is cold and gray and ghastly, and living it is punishment enough.” Indeed, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s sardonic masterwork “The Threepenny Opera, “ based on John Gay’s 18th century “The Beggar’s Opera,” is no barrel of laughs.

A timeless slam at power, corruption and hypocrisy, its grim humor comes with jagged teeth and a sneer.

This expletive-laden production, staged through a glass darkly by director R. Charles Otte at soon-to-relocate Open Fist Theatre Company, has the sneer, but the teeth are blunted by miscasting and a too-knowing sense of modern resonance.

Using the Robert David MacDonald-Jeremy Sams English translation, further adapted here by Keith Alan Bernstein, the setting is the Victorian London underworld, as portrayed by down-and-out actors in a 1928 German cabaret, who execute it with calculated rough edges -- a clothespinned curtain, casual scene shifts, bruised eyes rolling at wobbly spotlights.

The brooding, hard-used environment by set designers Bill Eigenbrodt and Meghan Rogers works nicely with Otte’s deliberately truculent light design and A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s lived-in period costumes.

But while the onstage eight-member orchestra, led by musical director Dean Mora, captures the score’s haunting dissonances, the cast struggles with the overall challenges of this difficult piece. Josie Gundy, as corrupted innocent Polly, is a notable exception; most disappointing are an obscured Jenny Diver (Tish Hicks), a small-scale Mr. and Mrs. Peachum (David Castellani and Pam Heffler) and, lethally, musical veteran Bjorn Johnson’s stiff, uncharismatic Macheath.

What might have been is apparent here and there, most strikingly in the savage masculinity of the “Cannon Song,” enhanced by choreographer Kitty McNamee’s militant march.

-- Lynne Heffley

“The Threepenny Opera,” Open Fist Theatre Company, 1625 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays; ends June 12. $20. (323) 882-6912. Running time: 2 1/2 hours. www.openfist.org