I must confess that until last week, I was a "Nunsense" virgin.

Now that I have witnessed the 25-year musical success story, count me among the believers that convent humor can be habit-forming. It's good, clean fun, and in the production now at the CLO Cabaret, "Nunsense" also provides a showcase for a couple of veteran performers and an angel-faced novice.

Before a bell chimes or a note is sung, there's the promise of spending the evening with Pittsburgh's own, incomparable Lenora Nemetz, whose experience as a Broadway understudy provides a lyric in this show and is sung by ... Lenora Nemetz, as Sister Robert Anne, a streetwise nun who "just wants to be a star."

She's among five Little Sisters of Hoboken putting on a talent show, a fundraiser to bury the final few of their 52 fellow sisters whose deaths came via tainted vichyssoise. The surviving sisters were at bingo that night and, as Mother Superior puts it, "We've just got to get those girls out of the freezer."

It may sound like a brew for a dark comedy, but this is as light and frothy as a decaf latte. Creator Dan Goggin's growing franchise grasps for every laugh to be wrung from nunsensical cliches that are more nice than naughty. They put themselves out there in black and white ("Nunset Boulevard," anyone?) and dare us not to smile, at least.

Leading the way is gruff-on-the-outside Mother Superior, played by Terry Wickline, a familiar and welcome face from dozens of local productions. Making their CLO Cabaret debuts are Christy Rodibaugh as the ambitious head of novices, Sister Mary Hubert, and Leah Hillgrove, the novice and would-be ballerina who's trying to balance the habit she's wearing with the tutu she's dreaming of.

And then there's Sister Mary Amnesia, Brittany Ross, a recent graduate of NYU's Tish School of Drama.

Ms. Ross looks like she'd be perfect as Sandy in the high school production of "Grease" that provides the "Nunsense" backdrop. As Amnesia, who lost her memory when she was hit in the head by a crucifix, she sings with Shirley Jones-style brio, braves a solo quiz with audience members and does a hilarious duet with a puppet, all the while maintaining that halo of sweet-natured innocence.

Ms. Wickline owns a first-act high point -- literally. She gets high as a flying nun off a student's stash and for several minutes is laughing giddily, contorting on a lunch-counter stool and generally leaving the audience in stitches. It's hard to imagine maintaining that level of insanity through the show's run in June, but she was a hoot as "Nunsense" got off and running.

The cast heads to intermission with "Tackle That Temptation With a Time Step," with Ms. Nemetz tapping as only she can and reminding the sisters, "Fosse arms, girls," a nod to her mentor.

Those habits can be a cross to bear for individuality, but a bright red boa gets us in the mood for her big second-act solo, "I Just Want to Be a Star," which inevitably shows why she is one.

Ms. Rodibaugh's Sister Mary Hubert sums things up with the spirited "Holier Than Thou," a song that suggests that everyone has it in them to be a saint.

It had everyone clapping along.

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