IN his welcoming remarks to the opening-night audience at George Street Playhouse, Artistic Director David Saint elevated Arthur Laurents from “artist in residence” to “one of the family.” The celebrated playwright has certainly found a home here on New Brunswick’s theater row. This is the second world premiere of a Laurents’ work at George Street this year, following the production of New Year’s Eve in April.

   The new play, a briefer but more appealing work, is an uninterrupted 85 minutes of intense human drama, directed by the playwright himself. Laurents’ characters live what Thoreau would have called lives of quiet desperation, centering on a void.

   That void is the space left by the death of Paolo, a landscape architect who dominates the drama by his very absence. Each of the characters has so possessed him in life, hoarding his love, that his death from colon cancer has left each of them hanging, not together but separately. Exposed now are their vulnerabilities and their lack of connection. They grasp at whatever they can to keep from sinking in despair.

   At the center is Paolo’s widow, Sara (Alison Fraser), a one-time cabaret singer who is gingerly resuming a career she had abandoned. In the opening scene, she is in a spotlight, stumbling painfully through a heart-breaking rendition of “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” In just one verse, Fraser brilliantly establishes the depth of Sara’s pain. She’s a tad rusty, having neglected her voice for so long, but she’s determined to move on. The lyrics to this Depression-era song emphasize that: “The sweet things in life / To you were just loaned / So how can you lose / What you’ve never owned?” Sara believes Paolo has urged her to sing again, as if he were still alive and advising her.

   A reality check arrives in the form of Dougal (Jim Bracchitta), an art framer who had admired Sara’s talent before, although they’d never met. But their meet-cute is the classic cat-and-mouse game, in which she puts him at arm’s length. He’s on the rebound from a failed relationship and eager to open new avenues, although he can never compete with Paolo, for whom Sara has a deep, abiding love. Bracchitta plays Dougal as an upbeat, buoyant fellow, in contrast to the dour Paolo-ites.

   Meanwhile, Paolo’s mother, Marion (Shirley Knight), a psychotherapist, has resumed painting, a talent she too had neglected. Her subject, blue horses, has a deep-rooted meaning that we learn only later, when she has a personal breakthrough. While Marion says she accepts the reality of Paolo’s death, her husband, Richard (John Carter), who loved him inordinately, has not quite put Paolo away. He seems a defeated man who says that he had put everything in Paolo, and now he has nothing — not talent, not even alcohol to ease the pain: Going to “F—ing A, F—ing A” together and sobering up was something they shared.

   Paolo’s lesbian sister, Michelle (Leslie Lyles) — or Mickey as she insists — hates her parents for having ignored her while Paolo was alive. Now their preference for him over her is laid bare, since they have no love to invest in her. In Mickey’s own mind, her adored brother is still collecting exotic plants at a Long Island nursery. She feels a special bond with him, since they shared a secret.

   And Sara herself has always been a nonentity to her mother-in-law, who rebuffs her friendly overtures. Even Dougal is a threat to Marion, merely by taking an interest in Sara. The prospect of Sara marrying him is unacceptable. That one last shred of connection with Paolo through Sara would be lost. What irony — Sara and Marion competed for all of Paolo when he was alive. Now that he’s dead, they want to freeze in place the structure of their troubled relationship, as a kind of perverse memorial.

   For such a brief play, the intertwining of these relationships are remarkably complex and fraught with emotion. All the characters have invested their entire stock of love in Paolo, and the returns have come to nothing. The mentions of Wall Street and the financial themes that characterize the two songs are no accident. The other tune that Sara sings is “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” with the lyric, “And love can come to everyone.” But that precious commodity, love, has its risks and costs, as does friendship. What Sara reaches for in her relationships with Marion and Dougal is a redeeming connection.

   Laurents has chosen an excellent ensemble who complement each other well. Shirley Knight’s Marion is by turns icy, tart and wistful. Her transformation is subtle and gradual. And she’s funny when the script allows, as it often does. The conclusion does not nail the case shut by any means, nor should it. The fine cast is complemented by Christopher Howett on piano and Danny Stone on acoustic bass, who backup the vocals and provide transitions between the scenes, which are very imaginatively set against a backdrop of projected frames.

   Seldom does a one-act work have this much weight and levity, all in less than 90 minutes. This is a totally engrossing play whose characters bare themselves openly, painfully, and yet with wry humor. Their journey toward healing dwells in the mind well after the lights go up.

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  Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are continues at the George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick, through Nov. 1. Performances: Tues.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m., and matinees Sat.-Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets cost $37.50-$71.50. 732-246-7717; www.gsponline.org