About the Play:

Trip's Cinch is a one-act drama by Phyllis Nagy. Business tycoon Benjamin Trip has recently been on trial for the rape of Lucy Parks. The jury acquitted him but now an ambitious academic delves deeper investigating both parties. Who was really manipulated on that beach after a pitcher of gin and tonics and a hand of solitaire?

Trip's Cinch is an engaging and thought provoking piece that tackles the issues of class, entitlement and justice. The Accused: Benjamin Trip. Handsome, charming and well-groomed. The Victim: Lucy Parks. Good-looking, witty and self-assured. The Academic researcher: Val Greco. Opinionated, formidable and charismatic she interviews Benjamin Trip, a high-profile business executive who has been acquitted of rape. He wipes his hands whenever he touches her. Val then attempts to interview Lucy Parks, the school crossing guard Trip was accused of raping. But Parks refuses to cooperate, hiding behind a series of entrenched defences and the $500,000 Trip gave her after she lost her job to the publicity the case generated. Finally, we flash back to the beach where the alleged rape took place and watch as Trip plies Parks, dressed in her Little orange crossing-guard raincoat, with gin. In this caustic and wry play, Phyllis Nagy gives us both the truth and the lie about this random meeting of two people and the politics of sexual pursuit. Her taut, precise dialogue cunningly treads a fine line between what we see and what we hear and brings into sharp focus a world where pinning down words leads not to clarity and truth but to lies and obfuscation.

Trip's Cinch was commissioned and first produced in 1994 by the Actors Theatre of Louisville part of the 18th Humana Festival of New American Plays. The play received its UK premiere in 2002 at Southwark Playhouse to critical acclaim.

Cast: 2 female, 1 male

What people say:

"In three sharp scenes, Nagy presents the viewer with shifting perspectives in the aftermath of an alleged rape. In the first scene a rich, confident young man who has been acquitted of rape charges describes his version of the story to a female academic who is writing a book about the alleged event. In the next scene the academic interviews the young woman, who is hostile towards her. The final scene is a flashback to the night of the alleged rape. Each scene seems to carry a truth, but finally you cannot be certain of what happened, even if you have decided which side you're on." — Theatre Week

About the Playwright:

Phyllis Nagy is an American theatre and film director, screenwriter and playwright. She served as writer-in-residence at The Royal Court Theatre in London. Her plays have been translated into a dozen languages, have been performed across the globe. Her screenplay for Carol, based on The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith's classic second novel, won the New York and Seattle Film Critics Circle awards and received Academy Award, BAFTA, Spirit Award, Gotham Award and WGA nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2016.