BREAK A LEG, BETSY MAYBE!

Seventeen but sounding more like thirteen in the first-person narrative she divides into lists of dramatis personae, stage directions, and playlets with dialogue, Betsy Cythera Wilkerson Maybe is the orphan of a famous travel writer, recently transferred to a public school from Viewings, an expensive Vermont ""alternative."" Betsy/ Cythera claims to be suffering from a ""double-identity crisis,"" though both her split personalities together hardly sustain her through a year in which she rejects Harry, a theater nut who looks like Cyrano and works all his spare time to stay independent from a tyrannical father, and chases Nick, whose ""perfectionist"" girl friend rejects him when he is found to have Hodgkins disease. Betsy's own love of the theater could be her saving grace, as her skittish romances seem less melodramatic played against a background of high school productions of The Madwoman of Chaillot and Our Town. Kingman at least catches the aura of feverish energy that surrounds little theater efforts, but Betsy herself is the weakest member of a cast with more heart than talent.