People who think politics is all talk and no action may have their suspicions confirmed in Continental Divide, a co-production of Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on the boards through Aug. 1 at La Jolla Playhouse.

British playwright David Edgar has written a two-play cycle examining the American political process from the vantage point of a gubernatorial campaign in an unnamed western state which is unmistakably California. Each play focuses on one of the major parties.

The press material states that it doesn’t matter which order you see the plays. I’m sure that’s true; it’s difficult to make sense of them either way.

Mothers Against pits putative Republican candidate Sheldon Vine (Bill Geisslinger) and his deep-down libertarian leanings against his we-gotta-win handlers in a struggle of principle vs. practical politics.

The cast includes the usual political operatives – campaign managers, advisers, pollsters, volunteers – along with assorted family members and love interests. Vine, for example, has a standard-issue, tree-hugging, eco-terrorist daughter named Deborah (Snowbird to the in group, played by Christine Williams).

Edgar has a way with clever dialogue, but here he gets so tangled up in what he apparently sees as complexities that his characters end up nearly incoherent. And Director Tony Taccone, perhaps in an effort to speed things up, has them talk fast. After a while, your brain hurts from trying to catch it all and figure out what they’re talking about. Even the parts that are clear are not especially enlightening, at least not for anyone who’s been around the American political system longer than 10 years.

There are tired old characters who give tired old speeches, like Vincent and his spiel about blacks clinging desperately to “their enslavement” – the notion that they can’t succeed without help even though they know they are capable of improving their lives.

There are tired old lines, like this exchange between Vine and his campaign manager:

Vine: “How can they not know what I think?”

Manager: “This is an extremely well-run campaign.”

But mainly, there is little life in this play. People talk but, aside from Deborah, they don’t seem to feel or care much about anything. After a while, neither do we.

The best scene in this play is a mock debate in which conservative talk-show host Lorianne Weiner (Christina Rouner) stands in for opponent Rebecca J. McKeene – a scene which sets up the next play.

Meanwhile, Daughters of the Revolution sports more characters, more busyness and three more hours of words, but it isn’t much more dramatic than its sterile companion piece.

The tree huggers get much more time so Edgar can make his leaden points about the death of idealism, or its sacrifice to the exigencies of practical politics.

There’s a sort of whodunit here concerning an extraneous character named Michael Bern, former ’60s activist, whose girlfriend Abby (Michelle Duffy) obtains a copy of his FBI file as a birthday gift. Michael realizes that somebody back in the ’60s ratted him out to the FBI and spends an extraordinary amount of time trying to find the culprit, for reasons which become less and less important to the audience as time goes on.

Another character is Democratic nominee Rebecca McKeene (Lynnda Ferguson) who, like most politicians, also has an incident in the past she’d rather not have revealed.

It’s all so ho-hum and so ... wordy. It’s a pity, because the casts in both plays are excellent, but they sink in the morass of verbiage.

Edgar is known to have a dramatic sense (his fascinating Pentecost received a spectacular production at the Old Globe last year), but seems to have abandoned it here for the chance to play professor. Watching these plays gives the distinct impression the prof is speaking through the characters, and the message is “Look at all the research I did. Are you impressed with what I’ve learned?”

Well, no. What he’s learned is what every American who’s voted a few times has known for years. And we’d rather not spend six hours in a theater being reminded.

Continental Divide plays in repertory at La Jolla Playhouse through Aug. 1. For tickets call (858) 550-1010.