Spend time in the theater district in London’s West End and the sight of armies of American students soon becomes a familiar one. They are visiting London on two- or three-month study abroad programs and are confronted with an exhaustive theatergoing schedule.

Richard Nelson’s 1989 play “Some Americans Abroad,” directed by Gordon Edelstein, is not concerned so much with the students — only two of them appear onstage — as with their professors. The academics are headed by Joe Taylor (Tom Cavanagh), the recently appointed chairman of the English department, whose daughter Katie (Cristin Milioti) also attends the college. Along with colleagues Philip Brown (Corey Stoll), Frankie Lewis (Enid Graham), and Henry McNeil (Anthony Rapp), Joe is faced with keeping the young charges under control and reaping artistic riches from the plays that form the purpose of their visit.

Mr. Nelson painstakingly shows how they fail at both tasks. The students skip shows, lose passports, and indulge in the follies of adolescence. In turn, the academics idle away time discussing politics, philosophy, and the theater in playhouse foyers and Central London bookstores but lack both the time and the inclination to digest the meaning of the work they have just witnessed. The Aldwych farces they see onstage are mirrored by the farcical nature of their own lives.

With a nod to Mark Twain’s 1869 travel critique “The Innocents Abroad,” Mr. Nelson shows how binging on Anglomania without pausing for breath can lead to sore heads. The party rushes to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and pays an awkward visit to Taylor’s predecessor, politically incorrect dinosaur Orson Baldwin, hilariously portrayed by John Cunningham, who has retired in “Jamesian Sussex.”

A particularly tragic case is Mr. Rapp’s McNeil, who has failed to achieve tenure, his insecurities enhanced by his decrepit tweed suits and scruffy red hair. Mr. Cavanagh is masterful when it comes to displays of condescension to fellow American theatergoers. But Taylor’s ivory tower detachment prevents the warmth that would have made his frequent musings on departmental expenses and the enduring relevance of George Bernard Shaw more tolerable.

Mr. Nelson sets his play in the era when Kenneth Branagh seemingly acted in every Shakespeare production and Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Hare were in their imperial phase. References abound to Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1984 TV saga “The Jewel in the Crown.” If “Some Americans Abroad” were an ’80s pop group, it would be Talk Talk.

But the amusing moments in “Some Americans Abroad” can’t disguise its mustiness. Its opening night was delayed, and I can’t help wondering whether this was because a crack team of refurbishers was needed to dust off this revival’s cobwebs. Michael Yeargan’s uninspired set design reinforces the stodgy feel. In the second half, the lethargy temporarily dissipates when Brown, spikily played by Mr. Stoll, is accused of inappropriately touching a student and is shown to be having an affair with another lecturer. But ineffectually resolved, these potential dramatic fireworks end up damp squibs.

“Some Americans Abroad” reinforces the point that the finest plays about the education process, such as Terence Rattigan’s “The Browning Version” and Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist,” profit from the teacher-pupil dynamic. Mr. Nelson’s decision to minimize the students’ onstage presence works to the play’s detriment.

Still, even if “Some Americans Abroad” is an overlong, ultimately underwhelming comedy of manners, the characters are well observed. I wonder how they would have taken to the rapacious 1990s, when the likes of “Rent,” led by Mr. Rapp, precipitated a culture shock whose effects reverberate around the Rialto to this day.

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