People have a habit of talking past one another in David Greig’s plays. Willfully or with the best of intentions, they mishear and fail to hear each other; they misunderstand and fail to know each other. The longings of the human soul, laid bare for acknowledgment, go unnoticed or ignored.

In “Damascus,” a heart-bruising comedy that is the Scottish playwright’s second entry in this year’s Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, Mr. Greig’s subject is the failure of entire regions of the planet — the West and the Middle East — to hear one another, to speak and to listen in such a way that comprehension follows. “Damascus” is not an Iraq war drama, but that context is as inescapable as the contemporary news footage of Syria that plays throughout on a television screen in the set’s hotel lobby.

The West could not ask for a more sympathetic representative than Paul (Ewen Bremner), a textbook author who arrives in Damascus to pitch an English-language learning system to a school there. Rumpled and vaguely pathetic, with blue eyes and skin so fair it verges on pasty, he looks every inch the Englishman — except, of course, that he’s Scottish. Mirroring Paul’s own ignorance of Middle Eastern cultures, Syria included, the distinction means little or nothing to the locals.

Zakaria (Khalid Laith), the winningly eager receptionist at Paul’s hotel, is one who bothers to learn such nuances. A sponge for all things Western, he dreams of Hollywood and of France; when he visits the Great Mosque, a nearby tourist attraction, it is in hopes of picking up women from Europe and America. At 23, he inhabits an airless life. The West promises the oxygen he needs, if only he can reach it.

“I am not here. Mr. Paul,” Zakaria says in his hobbled English, imploring his guest to help him find a way out. “I am not here one minute more.”

Messrs. Bremner and Laith have a delicious chemistry, and in Philip Howard’s lopsided production from Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, it is the relationship between Paul and Zakaria that feels most real, most urgent.

Mr. Greig explains in a note on the text that “Damascus” was an unexpected result of theater workshops he has been leading in the Middle East since 2000. The play, he writes, is his exploration of “the complexities of relations between the west and the Arab world.”

In constructing “Damascus,” unfortunately, he built a trap he falls right into. Paul’s English textbook, predictably, isn’t acceptable to the Syrians; to make the sale, he must change it to reflect the Syrian worldview — which, as it happens, is not necessarily what a Westerner would assume it is. But the objections to the text, voiced by Muna (Nathalie Armin), the school official who listens to his sales pitch, amount to a mini survey on Arab issues that is baldly, off-puttingly didactic. As Muna lectures Paul, she is inevitably lecturing the audience as well.

Other crucial elements of the play, however, seem mistranslated from page to stage. Among these is the attraction that swiftly develops between Paul and Muna, who becomes his reason for extending his stay in Damascus. (When he calls his wife on Valentine’s Day to tell her he’s been delayed, Governor Spitzer springs unavoidably to mind.)

Sexual allure, the play wants to suggest, is one of the first catalysts to overcoming barriers of language and culture. But Muna is so lacking in warmth that there can’t be anything simmering beneath the surface. Ms. Armin is not merely reserved and inscrutable, as the role demands, but so stiff that the long-ago passion between Muna and her boss, Wasim (a supple Alex Elliott), fails to convince as well.

Also throwing things off is the oppressive over-miking of Elena (Dolya Gavanski), the hotel pianist, who acts as a narrator of sorts from her perch on a platform above the lobby. (The set is by Anthony MacIlwaine.) Ms. Gavanski does need to be heard above her music, but the volume at a recent performance was so jarringly high, making audible her every breath, that Elena seemed to be in another play entirely.

Mr. Bremner, conversely, possesses that ineffable magnetism that makes it difficult for us to take our eyes off him. “Damascus” is at its best, and funniest, when we get to watch his awkward, befuddled Paul stumble through the city, deploying his terrible French and nonexistent Arabic, preferably with Mr. Laith’s puppylike Zakaria at his side.

When Mr. Greig lets the people, not the politics, tell the story, we cannot fail to understand him and be moved.

Until June 1 (59 E. 59th St., between Madison and Park avenues, 212-279-4200).