Topsy-Turvy

If David Lynch can do a movie that’s a true story about a guy on a lawnmower (see The Straight Story in the “Upstate Theaters”), then Mike Leigh, who won all kinds of writing and directing awards and nominations for Secrets & Lies, can do a movie about Gilbert and Sullivan.

Using a not-too-stiff-lipped British cast mostly unknown to American audiences, Leigh visits the famous 19th century team whose musicals such as Pirates of Penzance (“This is not grand opera in Milan; this is merely low burlesque in a small theater on the banks of the Thames.”) made them household names among educated English-speakers – the Lennon and McCartney of the day. It’s 1884, and after 13 years of successful collaboration the relationship has turned sour, composer Sullivan (Allan Corduner) complaining that librettist Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) has run out of ideas. Which is pretty much true, until Gilbert catches a visiting Japanese exhibition that inspires him to begin working on The Mikado.

Okay, so perhaps that doesn’t strike you as exciting as perky young breasts, but Leigh has assembled a careful, impeccably acted look at Victorian habits and mores that will reward patient (it’s nearly a member of the Three Hour Club) moviegoers. Enthusiastic utilization of neat period details, such as early telephones, primitive dentistry, and veterinary-sized syringes for actors with opium habits, color the fabled English penchants for prudishness – as well the excess it fostered – and xenophobia. Against this backdrop a parade of prima dons and donnas struggles to birth something rare and giddily light-hearted, as in Shakespeare In Love if at a much more deliberate pace.

Because Topsy-Turvy has also already won some awards, and Broadbent (Bullets Over Broadway, Little Voice) was rumored for an Oscar nom (we’ll know by the time this hits the stands), it’s another one of those films doing a late, limited run in Greenville. If it sounds like your cup of tea, catch it while you can. B

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