It was the subsequent royal commission that described the events leading up to the collapse of Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge as moving “with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.” On 15 October 1970, a buckled 2,000 tonne section of the bridge fell into the Yarra River, killing 35. It was Australia’s worst-ever industrial accident but, while it forced changes to workplace law, it has remained a strangely recondite event in the consciousness of the city, obscurely remembered if at all.
Playwright Dennis McIntosh was an 11-year-old boy when the bridge collapsed and he never forgot. West Gate is the result of this lifelong fascination, one that aims to cut through the legalese of commission reports to the raw human story underneath. McIntosh employs a two-act structure, with the collapse occurring at the midway point – in place of an interval, we get catastrophe and death. The play’s architecture neatly underscores the actual cause of the accident: the two sections of the bridge that failed to seam.
