Mike Leigh makes the rehearsals as absorbing as the performances in this warm, funny account of Gilbert and Sullivan at work. Jim Broadbent leads a persuasive company, though the historical detail occasionally holds things up.
Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy is a generous, funny film about the work involved in making musical entertainment, and we recommend it with one reservation: it sometimes takes longer than it needs. The partnership of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan provides the story, with the making of The Mikado as its main business. Leigh keeps looking beyond the two names. The performers matter, as do the rehearsals and the effort of getting things right. There is considerable pleasure here in watching people take the business of entertaining an audience seriously.
Jim Broadbent, as Gilbert, gives the partnership its most compelling presence. He makes Gilbert funny without turning him into someone we can dismiss, and that gives the differences between the collaborators some weight. Allan Corduner’s Sullivan is distinct enough in temperament that their working relationship never feels inevitable. We believe these men can make something together, and we can understand why doing so might be tiring. Leigh’s script allows both personalities room without reducing their difficulties to a lesson about how talented people ought to behave.
The rehearsals are where the film becomes most absorbing. We were unexpectedly moved by the sight of people working through a performance together, because Leigh allows their effort to occupy our attention without demanding a crisis. He gives the work time to become interesting in itself. Timothy Spall’s Richard Temple and Shirley Henderson’s Leonora Braham help make the company feel populated by people with concerns of their own. They remain worth watching when the famous partnership is not the immediate subject, and the film is richer for its willingness to stay with them.
Dick Pope’s cinematography gives the staged numbers a welcome sense of space, allowing the company to hold our attention together. Eve Stewart’s production design makes the theatre convincing as somewhere people work, even amid the pageantry. Lindy Hemming’s costumes contribute to that spectacle without making the ensemble seem interchangeable. The period detail is plentiful, but it rarely prevents us from looking at faces. These departments serve the performances well; the surroundings feel substantial enough that Leigh does not need to keep drawing attention to them.
Robin Sales’s editing is patient with the rehearsals and musical numbers, and that patience is often repaid. Carl Davis’s musical contribution helps the staged passages work as entertainment in their own right, without requiring prior affection for Gilbert and Sullivan. There are stretches, though, when the accumulation of historical detail weakens the sense of anything needing to happen next. At 160 minutes, the film occasionally makes its thoroughness tiring. A little less time spent establishing this theatrical world would not have diminished our belief in it.
Leigh is more interested in the people around a production than a conventional account of famous collaborators needs to be. Lesley Manville’s Lucy Gilbert belongs to that interest in lives beyond the work, and the large cast prevents the partnership from becoming the only relationship that counts. The humour leaves room for unhappiness without making the musical pleasures seem foolish. That matters in a film which asks us to spend so long in the company of entertainers. Its occasional lack of urgency is partly the cost of giving other people their due.
An interest in how people work together is enough to make this worth an evening. The musical passages are substantial, however, and anyone impatient to return to the story will have to adjust. Give it time, and let the rehearsals be the attraction.
