Trip's Cinch,Southwark Playhouse , London

A slight, trite trip to the seaside

A cryptic triptych, Trip's Cinch was first produced in the US in 1994, but is already showing its age. The characters in Phyllis Nagy's one-hour play behave improbably and speak in a clipped manner, and the event we're shown from three perspectives is never seen in full. Truth is as elusive as the sand that drifts across much of the narrow stage, which serves as the home of a supposed rape victim, the office of her supposed attacker, and the beach where whatever it was took place.

Even in 1994, though, the was-she-or-wasn't-she? genre was looking a bit tired, and the gloss of unreality here doesn't disguise the familiar material. Benjamin Trip, a handsome, wealthy young man, has been acquitted of raping Lucy Parks, a school-crossing guard he met at a beach bar in an unnamed American city. Val (short for Valentina) Greco, a middle-aged academic, is writing about the case, and interviews both of them. The play opens with Ben re-enacting the encounter which, he says, began with his inspecting a ladder in one of Lucy's stockings. This story is not rendered more plausible by Ben's saying, in the final scene, "I might be able to repair it."

Val then calls on Lucy. Whereas with Ben she was direct and challenging, but reasonably respectful, even mildly flirtatious, with Lucy she is condescending. Lucy is more than a match for her. Val asks for coffee, then tea, and is reduced to saying, "I'm very thirsty." Lucy replies, "I'm a really bad hostess."

What's more puzzling than what really happened at the seaside is why either party should want to talk to Val. Ben wouldn't want more publicity, and Lucy, who has already been vilified by the press, has, it turns out, another reason for keeping her mouth shut. When Val tries to interview Lucy, she talks in a normal fashion, but with Ben she is arch and mannered, as is he with her; when Ben hesitates or changes the subject, he speech is unnaturally emphatic and full of Pinteresque pauses.

Thea Sharrock's production makes the most of the play's eerie chill, but I really don't know what to make of it all. Slight and trite, the situation doesn't hold our interest any more than the characters. Val, who has made a career of gender-bending literary criticism, seems like a boring version of Camille Paglia; Ben is a cipher; Lucy, who appears to be the author's surrogate (she has far and away the best lines), is impossibly confident and articulate for a lollipop lady and no more engaging than the other two. Against the odds, though, the lovely Ruth Gemmell makes her endearingly vulnerable and mysterious.

Perhaps I'm missing something – or everything – but this deracinated, antiseptic piece simply seems to me precious. The setting, the author notes, should be "a non-naturalistic landscape" in which "an executive desk and two office chairs should be placed... as if they've always been there". I'm sure the team at Southwark tried hard, but for the effect to be achieved, that furniture should really be six inches to the left.

To 5 October (020-7620 3494)