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.
Liberal use of working-class banter circa 1970 conjures life on an industrial site with charm and authenticity, the long opening scene – commencing with a roll call that will be heartbreakingly repeated after the accident, and ending with a vote on a stop-work motion that might have saved the men’s lives – placing us uncannily under that bridge in peril. Sparks fly, men rib each other and fatal matters are decided. McIntosh has a terrific ear for the vernacular of a burgeoning migrant city, and several lines – “I just look young because I’m handsome” and “Don’t be a fuckwit as well as a cunt” – feel like instant classics.
Less successful are the many scenes between bickering executives – Stevenson (Paul Fletcher), Cooper (Ben Walter) and McAlister (Peter Houghton), all crisp and impassioned – about contractual obligations, steel ruts and concrete; they quickly become turgid and repetitious. The actors do their best but McIntosh never lifts this material beyond class tropes and cardboard villainy. He has similar problems later with the only female part, grieving widow Frankie (Daniela Farinacci), who seems designed as an icon of stoic migrant pride. Even his central characters, Victor (Steve Bastoni) and Young Scrapper (Darcy Kent), while amiable company, are cobbled from cliches.
Despite this, the performances are flawless, lived in and vital, filling in blanks left by the script. Bastoni shines as the honest ironworker with his eye permanently on the star of hope, radiating an earned and melancholy joy. Farinacci is just as good, rigid with anger and buzzing with determination, a lean and watchful survivor. Kent tries hard to iron some of the inconsistencies in his character, and manages to suggest a heaving burden in the centre of his chest. Simon Maiden and Rohan Nichol are both excellent as rival union members, even when their parts sink into mawkishness.
Directed by Iain Sinclair – reuniting with most of the creative team from his transfixing 2019 production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge – West Gate is a play of two halves, with the lead-up to the tragedy humming with unspoken dread and the aftermath sliding mournfully into eulogy. All of it, however, is eclipsed by the cataclysm at the centre of the story, and the staging of this coup de theatre surely ranks among the most jaw-dropping the Sumner theatre has ever seen.
We get a hint of what it might feel like at the very beginning, as Niklas Pajanti’s full lighting rig lifts slowly into the fly and Kelly Ryall’s profoundly disturbing rumbling is punctured by the awful sound of twisting metal. The stage (set and costumes by Christina Smith), dominated by a huge monolithic concrete pylon, feels dangerous and charged from the opening seconds. When that bridled horror is unleashed with such suggestive force and conviction at the moment of impact, it feels like a rift in the natural order. After that, the play limps to a worthy but dull conclusion, a lot of dust settling.
Sinclair directs with consummate ease and consideration. He is a master of blocking, of the meaningful and dynamic placement of the actors within his tightly marshalled space. Technically, the production is a marvel, with Pajanti’s startling, angular lighting combining with Ryall’s deeply affective compositions to convey the chill and magnitude of that dreadful day.
West Gate is a moving and respectful tribute to the lives lost on 15 October 1970. But the playwright assumes a meaning for the disaster he never successfully articulates, with characters who rarely move beyond the obvious and sentimental; it doesn’t move with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy but the diligent recounting of a tragic event. Nothing resonates outwards and the stakes remain merely personal. Sinclair’s production of A View from the Bridge worked because Arthur Miller poured his social conscience into indelible characters who could carry the burden of his lofty theme. McIntosh’s play, on the other hand, seems dwarfed by the sheer weight of his own fascination. Still, it’s a mighty crash.
• Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of West Gate runs at the Sumner theatre until 18 April
