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THEATRE
West Gate ★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, Southbank Theatre, until April 18
These days, the hulking monolithic structure that connects Melbourne’s east and west is synonymous with traffic congestion and oversized trailers, but more than 50 years ago, the West Gate was the site of Australia’s deadliest industrial disaster, when the bridge’s sudden collapse led to the deaths of 35 men.
The fateful events that culminated in this tragedy and its emotional aftermath are fictionalised in Dennis McIntosh’s play, informed by a truth gleaned from meeting with families of the deceased, and years of assiduous research.
At the heart of West Gate is proud Italian migrant Vittorio (Steve Bastoni), a welder who’s a father figure of sorts to the labourers, particularly the aimless young “Scrapper” (Darcy Kent) – a blustery man who masks his vulnerability with feigned bravado and a veneer of casual racism. We meet foreman and union rep Pat (Rohan Nichol), whose commitment to fairness and rules clashes with the amiable BJ’s (Simon Maiden) own thoughts on workplace safety.
There’s a clear demarcation in West Gate between the blue-collar, migrant labourers who are building the bridge and the middle-class upper management, who debate on the sanctity of their lives at a remove that only hierarchy and privilege can provide. This callous disregard and a hubris familiar to anyone who remembers the Titanic is externalised by a trio of engineers: Stevenson (Paul English), McAlister (Peter Houghton) and Cooper (Ben Walter).
It quickly becomes evident that something is amiss with the West Gate project. Lead engineers who designed the bridge have absconded; a similarly designed box girder bridge in Wales collapsed a few weeks prior; key specifications are missing, and directions from the head English company are not forthcoming. All the while, the clock is ticking and deadlines must be met.
The devil is in the (sometimes excessive) detail, but McIntosh is less preoccupied with the minutiae of who did what, and more fixated on the abrogation of responsibility that resulted in a tragedy that could’ve been prevented in all ways.
When the inevitable occurs, it’s a cataclysmic spectacle of horrifying magnitude engulfed by the discombobulated din of frightened men – best left unspoiled for those of us yet to see this play. It’s stagecraft at its finest, a stunning recreation of the moment that left many men buried under rubble, thrown to the ground, burnt by exploding diesel fuel.
The play is spliced into two by the bridge’s collapse, underlined by Christina Smith’s shift in set design from the nuts and bolts to the personal. When the stage is once more illuminated, we’re transported to the domestic realm where Vittorio’s wife Francesca (Daniela Farinacci) grieves, confined to a kitchen squashed beneath splayed beams and concrete. Farinacci is a much-needed intervention against the all-male cast of the first act, but her acting prowess outstrips the limitations of her written character.
If the first act features hackneyed dialogue in parts, the second half suffers from a certain sense of inertia as the characters try to find their way in among their grief and loss. There are affecting moments of camaraderie and comradeship that build to a moving end, but the emotional fallout is borne almost single-handedly by Francesca, and Pat’s and BJ’s thin characterisations become more evident when they morph into ciphers for feelings and movements larger than what their personal narratives can convey.
Management’s response to the disaster and the ensuing Royal Commission are predictably and criminally negligent, but even this reveal feels at a remove; the character of Stevenson is rendered more like a cartoon villain than a man whose actions had far-ranging consequences for generations to come.
Where West Gate excels is in its exquisite staging and platforming of voices traditionally considered antithetical to the highfalutin artifice of theatre. Under Iain Sinclair’s expert direction, Kelly Ryall’s ominous sound design, coupled with Smith’s minimalistic set and Niklas Pajanti’s supremely effective light design, is the prism through which we experience this working-class story and watershed moment in Melbourne’s history.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair
MUSIC
Anna Lapwood ★★★★
Melbourne Town Hall, March 13
A source of entertainment and education, town hall organs in the 19th and early 20th centuries enjoyed enormous popularity. Anna Lapwood’s irrepressible vivacity has won a new generation to the sonic possibilities of these extraordinary instruments, vigorously harnessing the power of social media to do so. Witness her extraordinarily diverse fan base selling out two concerts in Melbourne Town Hall.
Lapwood is unafraid to bring a childlike enthusiasm to her task, along with the passion of a motivational speaker and the chutzpah of a seasoned entertainer. A huge film buff, she skilfully blends the worlds of classical and theatre organist into a highly popular, personal amalgam, blessed with enviable dexterity of hands and feet.
Drawing an imaginative palette of colours from the Town Hall’s Grand Organ, she did not disappoint her fans, exciting them with the dramatic intrigue of The Da Vinci Code, the camp derring-do of Pirates of the Caribbean and the poignant race to find new worlds in Interstellar. Of all these Hans Zimmer scores, Interstellar is responsible for making the organ a viral phenomenon.
Ludovico Einaudi’s minimalist Experience was contrasted by Rachel Portman’s Flight. Admirable, clear technique was also on show in John Williams’ Duel of the Fates from Star Wars; space journeys further explored in Limina Luminis by Olivia Belli.
Lapwood’s substantial The Lord of the Rings organ symphony demonstrated her capacity for organistic storytelling. Maybe accompanying the entire film might be next?
Given the warm reception given to the Toccata by 19th-century French organist Eugène Gigout, it was a pity that Lapwood forfeited the educational opportunity to broaden her fans’ horizons by not adding some further recognisable classics.
Even so, in a city with a decades-long dearth of organists, here’s hoping that Lapwood will inspire some young devotees to take up the king of instruments.
Reviewed by Tony Way
MUSIC
The Devil’s Violin ★★★★
Australian Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, March 14
It was immediately apparent: the unique sound of the 1743 Guarneri del Gesù violin played by Russian-born virtuoso Ilya Gringolts. Warm, intensely lyrical but also intriguingly soft-grained quality, here was a musical voice that could not be ignored.
No stranger to the Australian Chamber Orchestra and its audiences, Gringolts began with the Imitation of Bells by Johann Paul von Westhoff, which reappeared in the opening of Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D minor RV237. The brilliant source material led into a fervently committed account of the concerto in which the agile solo voice subtly counterpointed the burnished sound of the ACO’s impressive array of historical instruments.
In edgy contrast to the splendour of the Venetian baroque, an arrangement of Soviet composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No. 2 revealed an entirely different sound world.
In a testament to the versatility of the fine instruments onstage, such severe modernism seamlessly morphed into one of the most celebrated eighteenth-century works for violin, the Devil’s Trill by Tartini. The original sonata was conceived after the composer dreamt that he had sold his soul to the devil, who then played a fantastical work on his violin. No surprise that Gringolts and the ACO relished this fiendish challenge.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s ethereal Aria gave listeners a small taste of the glories of the ACO’s latest instrument acquisition, a 1610 Maggini viola, played by principal Stefanie Farrands.
Principal violin Satu Vänskä with her 1728/29 Stradivarius then duelled with Gringolts in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in C major, RV507 to the genuine delight of all present. It was a rare treat to savour the differences between two superb instruments.
Newly commissioned, Paul Stanhope’s Giving Ground was a thoughtful and well-crafted reflection on the ground bass that underpins the famous La Follia theme; Geminiani’s florid version providing an exuberant finale.
Reviewed by Tony Way
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