Ethical and moral vacancies in ‘Three Hotels’

“Three Hotels,’’ now at Williamstown Theatre Festival under the direction of Robert Falls, is a serious and thoughtful but fragmentary work whose dramatic impact is diminished by Baitz’s decision to structure this two-character drama in the form of three monologues.

This opens a revealing window onto the characters’ troubled souls, but because Kenneth and Barbara never directly interact, and marital and corporate showdowns are described rather than depicted, one ends up with the nagging feeling there’s a bigger, better play locked inside the narrow format of “Three Hotels.’’ (Written two decades ago, this is an early work by Baitz, who won acclaim last year for “Other Desert Cities.’’)

Within those constraints, Weber and Tierney deliver searching, solidly committed performances. As he demonstrated in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,’’ opposite Laura Linney, and in several TV dramas that followed his early success with the sitcom “Wings,’’ Weber has a knack for playing men who carry themselves with an outward confidence that does not quite conceal inner doubts. There’s often something tentative about his smile, a watery weakness just beneath the surface of those strong features.

In “Three Hotels,’’ Weber projects the worldliness, corruption, and eventual desolation of a man who has thoroughly misplaced his moral compass while climbing the corporate ladder.

At first, he seems utterly sure of himself. Sipping a cocktail in a hotel room in Tangier, Morocco, the picture of a never-off-the-clock businessman in his striped tie and pleated pants, Kenneth recounts how he made his bones by being willing to travel to distant branch offices and carry out, with smooth celerity, the dirty business of firing employees. (In this, “Three Hotels’’ anticipated the George Clooney character in “Up in the Air’’).