San Francisco Classical Voice

Mike Leigh's new film, Topsy Turvy, which has made it to the top of many best-movie lists for 1999 and now to Bay Area movie theaters, takes a fascinating tour through a year in the partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan. Many reviewers have stressed that it is not necessary to like, or even be familiar with, Gilbert and Sullivan to enjoy this movie--it is the story of the working relationship of two artists at their peak and a slice-of-life view of the Victorian world in which they lived.

While it is true that one need not know G&S to follow the movie, those familiar with their work will find much to chew on. Having spent 25 years in intimate association with the Savoy operas, and read many biographical works about both Gilbert and Sullivan, I can attest that this movie is remarkably faithful in letter and spirit to the historical G&S. Gilbert was eminently quotable and memorable, and Leigh makes liberal and discerning use of the correspondence and diaries in his highly literate and witty screenplay. Unlike Amadeus or Shakespeare in Love, there are no outright falsehoods. Leigh has taken liberties only by extrapolating from what we do know about Gilbert and Sullivan and their circle and taking it to the next step.

Sullivan (Allan Corduner), for instance, was long thought to have been celibate, largely because early biographies expurgated the more salacious parts of his diary. Arthur Jacobs' 1984 biography revisited Sullivan's diary and found coded references to his sexual forays with his American mistress and the frequent exclamation "Himmlische Nacht!" Leigh's film has Sir Arthur visit a Parisian bordello, but not just any bordello. In this one, Offenbach's Doll Song is played and sung (deliciously badly), while two giddy, unclad prostitutes act it out. Maybe it happened, and maybe it didn't, but it's not out of the question. He cavorted with royalty, and, like the Prince of Wales, he had a secret life.

At the other end of the spectrum from this Victorian underbelly is the highly respectable, "steady and stolidy" world that Gilbert inhabited. Leigh gives a hilarious portrait of Gilbert's estranged parents, his doddering senile father and his snapping-turtle mother. How could one grow up in such a starchy household, Leigh seems to ask, and not take refuge in fantasy? Contrasted with Sullivan's easy intimacy, Gilbert (the magnificent Jim Broadbent) is imprisoned in a cold isolated loneliness. We know that the Gilberts had no children, but we don't know whether that was by choice. Leigh shows us a Gilbert who was simply incapable of responding to his wife's aching need for closeness. In a heartrending scene at the end of the film, Lucy Gilbert speaks of a dream she has had about empty perambulators. Out of love and respect for her husband, she can be no more direct in expressing her need than he can be in answering it.

Leigh fills out this fascinating character study with an extraordinarily authentic and amusing picture of backstage life, familiar to anyone who has ever been a performer. Rivalries, salary negotiations, costume fittings, nerves, hurt feelings--these are not limited to the time or place this movie depicts.

The stars of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, however, are not the performers, but the author and composer themselves. Leigh properly focuses on their creative relationship, and again, what he presents on the screen is historically accurate and true. Gilbert and Sullivan had practically nothing to do with each other personally, but they admired and respected each other professionally, and they were hardly indifferent to the pots of money they were earning with their theatrical gold mine. Sullivan, however, felt that his real talent lay elsewhere, in stuffy oratorios and grand operas. This, he believed, was why Queen Victoria had knighted him, and not for his work with Gilbert (who was not knighted for another 24 years).

Sullivan wanted the opportunity to compose music that dealt with real emotions, feeling that Gilbert's nonsense verses stifled his composition. Nothing could be further from the truth. History has shown that his work with Gilbert is his real claim to fame. Indeed, it was their ability to bridge their vast differences which accounts for the vitality of their work. As Sullivan's mistress says in the film: "I love The Mikado. You put everything you are into it." But, perhaps because of Sullivan's desire for more serious emotional situations, Gilbert's later librettos do intermix more lyrics of real feeling into the fanciful "topsy-turvy" world of the movie's title.

Leigh lovingly presents a full spectrum of musical numbers, showing the comic, the charming, the introspective. The magnificently costumed performances are sometimes slow and static and indifferently sung, but they allow the polish and ingenuity of the lyrics to penetrate, which is particularly important for viewers who are not already familiar with them. In a bold stroke, Leigh ends the film with a soprano solo from The Mikado. The significance of ending with "The sun whose rays" is not immediately obvious, but Gilbert and Sullivan, whose partnership had nearly ended with Princess Ida, reinvented their collaboration with The Mikado. Perhaps this song expresses a newfound optimism: "I mean to rule the earth as he the sky; We really know our worth--the sun and I!"

(Baker Peeples is the Artistic Director of Lamplighters Music Theater, Conductor and Tenor.)

©2000 Baker Peeples, all rights reserved