Homegirl

Ann Magnuson is funny in company, which she showed on ABC's Anything but Love, playing the editor of a magazine not unlike the one in your hand. But she's at her best alone, cracking wise with TV references and dippy songs for the disenfranchised, who followed her uptown from the comedy clubs to Lincoln Center's "Serious Fun!" festivals. Now she's back downtown— with style—in a one-woman show called You Could Be Home Now at the Public Theater. "This grew out of the conflicting emotions l had about Dad selling the house we grew up in," Magnuson explains. It's a short leap from there to AIDS and Republican "family values," and Magnuson takes it with characteristic irony. But not too much: behind those blue eyes is a sappy girl from West Virginia. "I may get pissed at myself for crying over that saccharine AT&T commercial about long distance, " she says, "but l always do."

CHARLES BEAHAN