Betty Rules! is the title of a much-celebrated show for which Amy Ziff, one-third of the long-lived, D.C.-bred pop band Betty, got a Helen Hayes Award nomination last year. I didn’t see it, and I’ve never seen Betty play, so I can’t comment upon its, or their, alleged reign. But I can state with authority the following: Accident, Ziff’s one-woman show that opens Theatre J’s new “Incubator Series” of works-in-progress, does not rule.

Oh, it suggests. It probably watches a lot of C-SPAN. Perhaps it even, God help us all, blogs. But rule? ‘Fraid not. It’s too meandering (though it runs only an hour), too smug, too self-congratulatory. It’s meant to be Ziff’s confessional on the precipice of eternity. But alas, she cheats: There isn’t a genuine moment of regret, or even self-doubt, in it. Whenever Ziff supposedly chides herself for a life of rock ‘n’ roll excess, as when she describes an office visit with an impossibly prudish and judgmental gynecologist, it just comes off as bragging.

It goes down like this: We open on — surprise! — Ziff, regarding her own fresh corpse. Some kind of bathtub mishap, apparently. Or was it? A razor was involved, so there is some ambiguity. The occasion of her demise turns out to be a marvelous opportunity for her to reflect upon her life — as a daughter, as a lover, as a small-time rock star. Projected behind her is a running tally of all the good and bad things she did before shuffling off the old mortal coil. (Good: She was a camp counselor. Bad: She never prayed.) It’s all irresistibly fascinating, especially if your name happens to be Amy Ziff.