And “Cigarettes and Chocolate” is rescued by James Matthew Ryan, who manages to break through the play’s forced profundity with an insouciance that can only ...

Before he was known as a filmmaker, Anthony Minghella wrote for the stage, and during that time he seemed compelled by the idea that speech serves us insufficiently, a poetic notion from which real poetry rarely cascades.

Lauren Turner Kiel and David Barlow in “Hang Up,” one of the early plays by the British filmmaker Anthony Minghella at Atlantic Stage 2.

“Politics of Passion: Plays of Anthony Minghella,” a production of the Potomac Theater Project, consists of two short pieces — “Hang Up,” originally broadcast on BBC Radio in the ’80s, and “Cigarettes and Chocolate” — that explore the limits of ordinary communication, the inadequacy of words. This is a niftily protective posture for a writer whose failures might then be blamed on the impotence of language itself.

But Mr. Minghella knows exactly what he is trying to say, and he says it well. He writes with dexterity and humor. The question is whether what he is trying to say, in a larger sense, is actually worth hearing.

A phone conversation between a young man and a young woman in a long-distance relationship, “Hang Up” is a testament to the prospect that absence only makes the heart go yonder. Distance is grueling; infidelities are inevitable.

This is the second time that “Hang Up” has been performed in New York in six months, and yet it seems a curious, anachronistic choice for revival, given that part of the couple’s problem would easily have been solved had the two of them only been created in the era of the cellphone.

In deference to Mr. Minghella, the director, Cheryl Faraone, has insisted on largely British accents for all the actors in both plays, and Lauren Turner Kiel of “Hang Up” has a poor, distracting command of hers. She is rivaled by Tara Giordano in the second piece, who shuttles between sounding like a character in “Notting Hill” and a waitress in a diner, not in the Cotswolds. (In the unlikely event that either of these actresses is indeed British, the Home Office might want to consider revoking citizenship for crimes against enunciation.)

“Politics of Passion” is marked by a stark imbalance of acting talent. Ms. Kiel’s sparring partner in “Hang Up,” David Barlow, is as natural as she is overexerting. And “Cigarettes and Chocolate” is rescued by James Matthew Ryan, who manages to break through the play’s forced profundity with an insouciance that can only be described as wonderfully, believably British.

Mr. Ryan’s Rob is the husband of a woman who has decided to stop talking, prompted partly by the image of a self-immolating monk. Her silence is a form of social protest against a world where voices are essentially powerless and go unheard. To see “Cigarettes and Chocolate” is to feel as if you are witnessing a homeless man rummage through a mansion’s recycling bin — its evocation of injustice both true and trite.

!!! Annonce !!! Forum Marlboro.