The Performance: West Gate by Dennis McIntosh
The Company: Melbourne Theatre Company
The Theatre: Southbank Theatre
Runtime: One hour 45 minutes, no interval.
Until 18 April
Stars: 4.5
This will go down as one of the MTC's triumphs. A play about a bridge collapse. Who knew? West Gate is a feast for the senses working on a piece of never forgotten Melbourne history, when in 1970, a section of the unfinished West Gate Bridge collapsed, killing 35 and changing the lives of many forever.
West Gate is an emotional, eye-opening, startling play about the events leading up to the West Gate Bridge collapse and what happened after. Playwright, Dennis McIntosh researched this impeccably. After all, he remember the event. In the programme, he states, "At 11.50am on October 15 1970, I was an eleven-year-old boy standing on the netball court on top of the Sacred Heart Primary School in Newport. I was looking through the cyclone wire fence at the mighty West Gate Bridge that was being built across the horizon. It had just collapsed while under construction and the thud radiated out across the western suburbs of Melbourne."
The event left an indelible mark on Melbourne.
What McIntosh has done with his script, has created a number of exceptionally well-drawn characters who bring out the drama of the site, the times and sense of impending doom.
There's Vincent (Steve Bastoni) the "Wog" welder who loves taking the piss out of his young assistant, Young Scrapper (Darcy Kent). There's Pat (Rohan Nichol) the shop steward, trying to keep warring factions on the site together. There's Vinny (Simon Maiden) the union man who backs up Pat. And of course, there are the engineers, company men and bridge designers. Stevenson (Paul English) who'snd trying to keep the build on time and budget (Sound familiar?), Cooper (Ben Walter) who's working for the engineering company making the supports and concrete. And of course, there's McAlister (Peter Houghton) who's seeing the problems but is being stopped from speaking out at every turn.
Later in the play, we meet Francesca (Daniela Farinacci) , grieving wife to Vincent, who is just coming to terms with the disaster.
The cast are all excellent, but Steve Bastoni, playing the wise, sensible new Australian, and his okker counterpart Scrapper, played by Darcy Kent, truly stole the show.
The script, along with Iain Sinclair's careful and sensitive direction bring an incredibly emotional play to life. There is enough light and shade to keep things interesting without turning the play into an emotional mess. Knowing you're walking into a play about a bridge collapse in one thing. Walking out not feeling overwrought is another. Many left the auditorium visibly moved.
I cannot leave this review without mentioning the staging and the sound engineering. These elements made the play. It's quite a feat to have a large bridge collapse on stage but Christina Smith's set design made it happen. Making it even more real, Kelly Ryall's soundscape, from the ubiquitous seagulls' cries to the crackle of the welders to the final fall of the bridge. It's incredible.
At the end of the play, some of the cast stood in front of one of the supports, where the names of those killed were displayed. It was incredibly moving.
West Gate may not be the most uplifting of plays, but it is an important play, incredibly staged and acted. It is definitely worth a view, if not to see a bit of our city's history, but to see what modern theatre can actually do.
This is a triumph.
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