By Melissa James Gibson. Directed by Amiel Gladstone. A Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company production. At the Vancouver Playhouse on Thursday, January 13. Continues until January 29

This Playhouse production of Melissa James Gibson’s This, which features a bunch of self-obsessed urbanites in their late 30s, drove me nuts.

Jane’s husband has been dead for almost a year when her old college pals, Marrell and Tom, invite her to a party. They’ve also invited the suavely French Jean-Pierre, who works with Doctors Without Borders. Marrell hopes that Jane will have sex with Jean-Pierre—mostly because that’s what Marrell would like to do. Mutual friend Alan, a wisecracking gay man—we are a staunch and witty people—is also present.

In a party game that Marrell and Tom insist on playing, Jane is invited to guess at a story that the others have made up. What she doesn’t know is that they haven’t really invented a tale, so, psychologically duped, she ends up revealing her own story. It’s about a widow who is lusting after a married male friend. Distressed, Jane leaves, but a sexually itchy Tom soon arrives at her door and, in a fulfillment of the game’s prophecy, the two have sex standing up in her hallway. Jane feels badly for most of the rest of the play.

The first annoying thing about This is its rhythmic artificiality. The dialogue is full of repetition, simultaneous speech, and little conversational curlicues that have only a tangential relationship to communication. The style is superficial without being especially witty. It feels like Gibson repeats the same comic device about missed meaning a thousand times: when Jane refers to a neighbour who has a cat, Alan asks, “The super intense one?”, which prompts Jean-Pierre to ask, “The cat?”, to which Alan replies, “The neighbour.” Be grateful that I’m only citing one example.

The characters are dimly aware of emotional and social realities. Desperate to make a change in his life, Alan considers doing good—or maybe adding another L to his name. Unfortunately, the social criticism implicit in this construction isn’t sustained. Jean-Pierre takes one good swipe at the others’ petty concerns, but for the most part, the playwright amuses herself by polishing the surfaces of her characters’ narcissism. There are a couple of runs of funny dialogue in This, including the exchange during the party game, but they are exceptions.

Undeniably, the playwright engages large emotional dynamics—including betrayal and grief—but the batch of friends she has invented wisecrack so relentlessly and self-consciously that the fit doesn’t work. Imagine real death or disease on Seinfeld.

Fortunately, under Amiel Gladstone’s direction, there’s some strong acting in this Playhouse production. Megan Follows brings charming ease and appealing honesty to her performance as Jane. And even though I detested the character, I appreciated Dmitry Chepovetsky’s restrained, note-perfect performance as Alan.

Alison Green contributes an awkward two-tier set; the scenes on the upper level feel far away and it looks like they were impossible for Adrian Muir to light.

Oh well.