You’d expect a better script from two showbiz professionals.

After all, Donald J. Trump, before he was president of the United States, was a television personality and a onetime Broadway producer. (The show was a flop.) And Volodymyr Zelensky, before he was president of Ukraine, was an actor and a comedian.

So why, between them, couldn’t they come up with something better than a ham-handed parody of macho arm-twisting and submissive toadying in the manner of third-rate David Mamet or Harold Pinter?

To be fair, their performance of the material on the morning of July 25 was largely improvised and not meant to be repeated. The working title was “Eyes Only.” Pressure from Congress is what finally forced Mr. Trump to declassify the conversation, putting this act of political theater in the public domain.

It won’t win any prizes for subtlety there; as drama, it’s too clumsy and obvious.

Mr. Mamet, the author of criminal comedies including “American Buffalo” and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” had a much better bead on the poetics of thuggishness. His junk store thieves and real estate scammers observed the ABC rule — “always be closing”— but were patient and strategic in achieving their ends.