Betty Rules!

"It's kind of like the Go-Go's, but with an edge," says one of the members of Betty, a girl band known to people who watch HBO. She's talking, accurately, about her band, but at this point in the play it's only 1985, before the current lineup has jelled. To me that's impressive: Any band that can stay true to a one-line description of its sound for more than 16 years must know what it's doing. Betty Rules! is not a play so much as a concert masquerading as a play: The three band members portray either themselves, trying to work things out in therapy, or other people, reacting to the nationwide Betty phenomenon, for a few minutes at a time. Then they lapse into songs that can best be described as heavy bubble-gum. Sometimes the music is stiff, with crashing rhythms and stilted, beat-literal melody lines, but the band's a cappella and spoken-word pieces have a poignant beauty. Betty, when it wants to, can really sing. The best parts of the show are the crazed monologues in deep-Southern or midlands-British voices by Amy Ziff; otherwise it's a revue of power chords and punk-chick cheekiness developed over years in front of a television camera.