the opposite of seeming
by Douglas Messerli
Mike
Leigh (writer and director) Topsy-Turvy
/ 1999
If anything, Topsy-Turvy suffers in its attempt to stuff as many of these
topical references into his work as possible, forcing his characters, at times,
to participate in unlikely conversations of political issues such as the
collapse of the British garrison at Khartoum, the development of the telephone
(a special line connects Gilbert directly to producer D’Oyly Carte’s [Ron Cook]
office), the oddity of electricity (the Savoy Theatre features electric lights,
a rarity at the time), and revealing various cases of drug abuse and sexual
improprieties: Sullivan’s mistress Fanny Ronalds’ (Eleanor David) avocation of
women’s use of nicotine and easy embracement of an abortion; actor George
Grossmith’s (Martin Savage) morphine addiction; lead soprano Leonora Braham’s
(Shirley Henderson) alcoholism, possible lesbianism, and nightly sexual
encounters; Sullivan’s visitation to a French brothel; and Gilbert’s apparent emotional
and sexual frigidity. In Leigh’s view—and likely in reality—life upon the
Victorian stage was truly wicked.
But what most separates this work from
its more typical genre types is the director’s ability to work with an ensemble
cast. Accordingly, while we certainly do get to know the home lives, working
difficulties, and personal frustrations of its central characters, we
understand them more fully in the context of an entire world of
professionals—professionals both within the movie and outside it. It’s
sometimes the most mundane of scenes that reveal the depth of these characters,
who are so well acted that the viewer is easily sucked into the cinematic world
in which they are presented. I could spend hours just listening over and over
to the gentle remonstrations of Helen Lenoir (Wendy Nottingham) and D’Oyly
Carte (always, as Gilbert reminds, a man as smooth as calm waters) as they
attempt to negotiate an agreement for Gilbert and Sullivan to again collaborate
with one another. That it is unsuccessful, after their gentle and tender
ministrations, makes the pair’s refusal to work together all the more shocking.
Similarly, contract negotiations between
D’Oyly Carte and his actors, even ignoring the comic interruptions of the
self-assured Rutland Barrington (Vincent Franklin) and Grossmith—who have
consumed tainted oysters before their interviews—reveal more about the
characters than any contrived plot actions might. And, as the characters begin
their long series of rehearsals, costume fittings, and etiquette lessons about
Japanese culture, we become so intimately acquainted with the talents, quirks,
and frustrations of each figure that we begin to feel we personally know them,
helping us to be thoroughly engaged with their superlative—and their
performances are quite wondrous—stage actions. Just like everyone else in the
cast, we are crushed when Gilbert suddenly cuts Pooh-Bah’s great solo, “A More
Humane Mikado,” and we almost wish we could joy the cast members behind the
screen to protest in favor of its
restoration.
So fully do we begin to fill in the lives
of the large Mikado cast, that we often lose sight of the central players,
Gilbert and Sullivan. We perceive how Gilbert accidently became fascinated with
Japanese culture through his attendance of the Japanese exhibition of arts and
crafts in Knightsbridge, but we are kept somewhat in the dark as to how that
was transformed into such a sprightly comically cockamamie world. Indeed, given
his dour and dark view of the universe, his inability to socially engage, how
did Gilbert manage to create all of those topsy-turvy plots and, most
importantly, such engagingly comic rhymes?
His opposite, Sullivan, a man too thoroughly
engaged with women, wine, and song, often seems, on the other hand, a bourgeois
bore at home who might rather have spent his life composing the kind of
second-rate parlour songs and symphonies that so many Victorians took to heart,
rather than creating the delightful ditties for which he is now famous. While
Leigh is absolutely splendid in recreating the world spinning around these
artistic geniuses, we find it difficult, somehow, to understand how they came
to produce their art.

No matter, I suppose, since that art is
so splendidly realized in this picture. Perhaps we must look to the two women
in each of central figures’ lives, the vivacious and sexually advanced Fanny,
in Sullivan’s case, and the sexually frustrated yet adoring and supporting
“Kitty” (Lesley Manville) in Gilbert’s house. The last scenes of Leigh’s film
are given over to a fascinating suggestion for a future opera scenario, based
on “Kitty’s” dreams, obviously infused with Freudian imagery that reveals her
desire for a child or even an occasional sexual engagement. An entire stage
overridden with nannies pushing perambulators might have represented a
breakthrough of enormous importance, an escape from the silly magic rings and
talismans far more reaching in their surrealist possibilities than even Gilbert
and Sullivan’s witty and joyful concoction, The
Mikado. As the highly poised and self-contained Helen has quipped earlier
in the film: “The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.”
Perhaps Leigh’s film does not quite feel
like a biopic because he realizes and demonstrates that things are often the
opposite of what they seem, that the world, in short is “topsy-turvy”: those
who are at the center are never quite as interesting as those who faithfully
proffer their love and support.
Los Angeles,
November 6, 2012
["If anything, Topsy-Turvy suffers in its attempt to stuff as many of these topical references into his work as possible, forcing his characters, at times, to participate in unlikely conversations of political issues such as the collapse of the British garrison at Khartoum, the development of the telephone (a special line connects Gilbert directly to producer D’Oyly Carte’s [Ron Cook] office), the oddity of electricity (the Savoy Theatre features electric lights, a rarity at the time), and revealing various cases of drug abuse and sexual improprieties: Sullivan’s mistress Fanny Ronalds’ (Eleanor David) avocation of women’s use of nicotine and easy embracement of an abortion; actor George Grossmith’s (Martin Savage) morphine addiction; lead soprano Leonora Braham’s (Shirley Henderson) alcoholism, possible lesbianism, and nightly sexual encounters; Sullivan’s visitation to a French brothel; and Gilbert’s apparent emotional and sexual frigidity. In Leigh’s view—and likely in reality—life upon the Victorian stage was truly wicked."]
ReplyDeleteThese are some of the moments that made the film for me.