"Can we stop talking about punctuation?" asks Jane, the thirtysomething poet at the center of Melissa James Gibson's thoroughly involving new play, This, now premiering at Playwrights Horizons under Daniel Aukin's skillful direction. And the truth is, no amount of commas -- or similes or metaphors or consonants or vowels -- can mask the problems that Jane (Julianne Nicholson) and her hyperarticulate friends are facing in their daily struggles to get by. Unexpected widowhood, thoughtless adultery, sleep deprivation, and rootlessness simply cannot be tamed by language, not even language as beautiful and intricate as Gibson's.

The play, which takes place on Louisa Thompson's complex multi-fu[...]