Facing the music

>> Mike Leigh celebrates Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy-Turvy

by MATTHEW HAYS

 Filmmakers have been struggling for some time to revive the musical and, it must be noted, have had little success. Woody Allen tried with Everyone Says I Love You. Alan Parker tried with Evita. What with audiences not really accepting the form any more, other directors have tried to slip musical numbers into their movies more sneakily; take the karaoke numbers and singalongs in My Best Friend's Wedding, or the extensive performances throughout Velvet Goldmine.

 With Topsy-Turvy, Brit director Mike Leigh has managed to include elements of an old-fashioned musical by neatly masquerading the entire film as historical period piece and backstage comedy. Full-blown musical numbers unravel, and, filmed as they are, won't disrupt audiences' overly sensitive suspension of disbelief. It's a delightful spectacle--one Leigh handles, typically, with considerable style and wit.

 In fact, the style which has made him famous--with films such as Life Is Sweet, Naked and Secrets and Lies--seems all the more astounding with Topsy-Turvy. Leigh insists it's not improvisation, though there is improvisation involved. Rather, his distinctive method has actors research and rehearse for months before the shooting period, taking cues from director/writer Leigh as he guides the plotline, and then proceeding to capture the events, in sequence, on celluloid.

 This process has come up with exciting enough results when set contemporarily, but in late-19th-century London, the actors' considerable talents at this are all the more impressive. Jim Broadbent, as Gilbert, and Allan Corduner, as Sullivan, don't always see eye to eye, and the comic fallout from their disagreements is extreme. Sullivan is drawn to what he considers more "serious" work, while Gilbert continues to come up with ridiculous plot twists which Sullivan dismisses as formulaic. At what appeared to be a low ebb of their career, Leigh maps out the story of their bumpy collaboration on The Mikado and their ultimate triumph as the show was mounted.

 It's a frantic, highly theatrical film--and at over two-and-a-half-hours long, perhaps a bit much for non-thespians or those not involved in the local Gilbert and Sullivan Appreciation Society. But for those of us musical types, Topsy-Turvy scores in song, verse and style. :

 

Topsy-Turvy opens Friday, January 28