Trilogy Part 2: Town Bloody Hall

A region 1 DVD of Town Bloody Hall costs $59.95. There are no copies currently for sale on ebay. I know these things because I looked them up as soon as I got back from Nic Green's Trilogy Part 2, which was billed as a re-enactment of this legendary event.

In 1971, Norman Mailer chaired what was clearly a wildly enjoyable debate with Germaine Greer, Village Voice writer Jill Johnston, and two other feminists without such pleasingly alliterative names. This was no polite exchange of views; “Come on Jill, be a lady”, Mailer hectored Johnston at one point, to roars of disapproval from the crowd.

As Green explains near the beginning of her piece, the idea of producing a re-enactment ended up falling by the wayside. Instead, this is a devised production inspired by the cast's responses to the film, which was belatedly released in 1979, several years before any of them were born. While the births of the five performers are described in some detail, we find out nothing about Diana Trilling and Jacqueline Ceballos, the two other panellists.

In fact, we find out very little about the debate itself, its context or its cultural impact. We see two extended clips from it, but while the second of these is playing the performers are deliberately detracting attention away from the speaker, Greer, and onto the audience members seen in cut-away shots. It is as though the cast, having presumably viewed the footage countless times, have begun to assume that the audience is equally familiar with it, or even bored by it.

Aside from an awe-struck fan letter to Jill Johnston, there is little suggestion of how the events of that night might have affected these four women and one man. If the best response Green can come up with to ideas discussed so eloquently and passionately all those years ago – including male perceptions of female sexuality and the motivations of female artists – is to liberate her cast from their clothes and have them bound around the stage, it would suggest the debate has not progressed very much at all. Perhaps that's about right.