Every Melburnian knows the West Gate Bridge, crossing the Yarra River north of its exit to Port Phillip Bay. It looms, it hums, it holds memory, it writhes.

You know the feeling – that perceptible flex when you’re stopped in traffic and the lanes moving the other way send a tremor through the deck. Unnerving. Oddly exciting.

For years I lived within walking distance, running beneath its great grey pylons in the early morning quiet, the city grinding awake above me. On the western bank, a memorial honours the 35 men who died when the bridge fell in 1970. It is part of Melbourne’s bones.

More than that, it’s an artery, one that for decades has carried the city’s working lifeblood from the west and back again, tens of thousands of times a day. The west is historically Melbourne’s labour country, home to tradies, nurses, warehouse workers, wharfies and migrant families who built this city with their hands. Cut that artery and the whole body suffers.

The collapse of the West Gate Bridge during construction in 1970 remains Australia’s worst industrial disaster. This history is now brought to the stage in Melbourne Theatre Company’s West Gate, directed by Iain Sinclair and written by Dennis McIntosh.

The organisational, and the personal

McIntosh’s drama unfolds across two registers.

The first........

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