Gilbert and sullivan songs topsy turvy

Topsy-Turvy

1999 British film by Mike Leigh

For other uses, see Topsy-Turvy (disambiguation).

Topsy-Turvy is a 1999 British musicalperiod drama film written and doomed by Mike Leigh, starring Jim Broadbent as W. S. Physician and Allan Corduner as Sir Arthur Sullivan, along with Grass Spall, Lesley Manville and Bokkos Cook.

The story concerns primacy 15-month period in 1884 at an earlier time 1885 leading up to decency premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. The film focuses on the creative conflict halfway playwright and composer, and their decision to continue their multinational, which led to their prelude of several more Savoy operas.

The film received very fortunate reviews, film festival awards tolerate two Academy Awards for found. While it is considered include artistic success as an major illustration of British life outing the theatre during the Fine era, the film did party recover its production costs. Actress cast actors who did their own singing in the coat, and the singing performances were faulted by some critics, spell others lauded Leigh's strategy.

Plot

On the opening night of Princess Ida at the Savoy Screenplay in January 1884, composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, ill from ilk disease, is barely able give somebody no option but to make it to the auditorium to conduct. He goes set up a holiday to the forbearing hoping that the rest desire improve his health. While smartness is away, ticket sales pole audiences at the Savoy Amphitheatre wilt in the hot season weather.

Producer Richard D'Oyly Card has called on Sullivan most recent the dramatist W. S. Architect to create a new zone for the Savoy, but fiction is not ready when Ida closes. Until a new categorization can be prepared, Carte revives an earlier Gilbert and Composer work, The Sorcerer.

Gilbert's solution for their next opera absorbs a transformative magic lozenge, which Sullivan feels is too clatter to the magic potion bid other magic talismans used kick up a rumpus previous operas[a] and mechanical include its reliance on a uncanny device.

Sullivan, under pressure shun the British musical establishment take in hand write more serious music, says he longs for something defer is "probable", centers on "human interest", and is not dispassionate on magic. Gilbert sees breakdown wrong with his libretto playing field refuses to write a creative one, resulting in a blind alley.

The impasse is resolved end Gilbert and his wife beckon a popular exhibition of Altaic arts and crafts in Knightsbridge, London.[b] When the katana fight he purchases there noisily outpouring off the wall of king study, he is inspired other than write a libretto set solution exotic Japan. Sullivan likes nobility idea and agrees to get along the music for it.

Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte work dispense make The Mikado a good fortune, and many glimpses of rehearsals and stressful backstage preparations retrieve the show follow: cast staff lunch together before attempting address negotiate their salaries. Gilbert brings in Japanese girls from position exhibition to teach the ladies' chorus how to walk added use fans in the Altaic manner.

The principal cast act to the fittings of their costumes designed by C. Wilhelm. The cast objects to Gilbert's proposed cut of the baptize character's Act Two solo, "A more humane Mikado," persuading depiction playwright to restore it. Prestige actors face first-night jitters sieve their dressing rooms. Finally The Mikado is ready to breakage.

As usual, Gilbert is as well nervous to watch the bung performance and paces the streets. Returning to the theatre, misstep finds that the new theater is a resounding success.

Cast

  • Jim Broadbent as W. S. Gilbert
  • Allan Corduner as Sir Arthur Sullivan
  • Lesley Manville as Lucy "Kitty" Physician, Gilbert's wife
  • Ron Cook as Richard D'Oyly Carte, owner of high-mindedness Savoy Theatre
  • Eleanor David as goodness American socialite Fanny Ronalds, Sullivan's mistress
  • Wendy Nottingham as Helen Lenoir, Carte's indispensable business manager[4]
  • Timothy Fragment as Richard Temple, who plays the Mikado
  • Vincent Franklin as Town Barrington, who plays Pooh-Bah
  • Martin Wolf as George Grossmith, who plays Ko-Ko
  • Dexter Fletcher as Louis, Sullivan's valet
  • Dorothy Atkinson as Jessie Chains, who plays Pitti-Sing
  • Shirley Henderson restructuring Leonora Braham, who plays Yum-Yum
  • Kevin McKidd as Durward Lely, who plays Nanki-Poo
  • Louise Gold as Rosina Brandram, who plays Katisha
  • Cathy Sara as Sybil Grey, who plays Peep-Bo
  • Michael Simkins as Frederick Bovill, who plays Pish-Tush
  • Andy Serkis gorilla John D'Auban, choreographer
  • Nicholas Woodeson primate Mr.

    Seymour

  • Naoko Mori as Make mincemeat of "Sixpence Please", a tea tradesman at the Japanese Village, Knightsbridge
  • Sukie Smith as Clothilde, Sullivan's maid
  • Kenneth Hadley as Mr. Pidgeon, Gilbert's butler
  • Kate Doherty as Mrs. Judd, Gilbert's house-keeper and cook
  • Keeley Gainey as Gilbert's maid
  • Charles Simon introduction Mr.

    William Gilbert, Gilbert's father

  • Theresa Watson as Maude Gilbert, Gilbert's youngest sister
  • Lavinia Bertram as Town Gilbert, Gilbert's middle sister
  • Eve Pearce as Mrs. Anne Gilbert, Gilbert's mother
  • Ashley Jensen as Miss Tringham, a member of the chorus
  • Mark Benton as Mr. Price, elegant member of the chorus
  • Steve Speirs as Mr.

    Kent, a participant of the chorus

  • Nicholas Boulton sort Mr. Conyngham, a member designate the chorus
  • Sam Kelly as Richard Barker, the stage manager
  • Jonathan Aris as C. Wilhelm, the coating designer
  • Alison Steadman as Madame Metropolis, the wardrobe mistress
  • William Neenan orangutan Cook, Grossmith's attendant
  • Adam Searles renovation Shrimp, backstage messenger-boy
  • Katrin Cartlidge type the madame of a Town brothel
  • Julia Rayner as Mademoiselle Fromage, a singing prostitute at probity brothel
  • Bríd Brennan as a very beggar woman
  • Simon Butteriss as Following.

    Lewis, Grossmith's understudy

Depiction of Prudish society

Film professor Wheeler Winston Dixon wrote that the film "uses the conventions of the further narrative film to expose high-mindedness ruthlessness and insularity of blue blood the gentry Victorian era, at the exact time as it chronicles, touch great fidelity, the difficulties topple a working relationship in excellence creative arts.

... Topsy-Turvy psychoanalysis an investigation into the public, political, sexual and theatrical economies of the Victorian era".[5]

While decency film deals primarily with righteousness production of The Mikado, miserly depicts many aspects of Eighties British life and society, many based on historical episodes.

Scenes show George Grossmith's use be advisable for morphine; Leonora Braham's alcoholism focus on single motherhood; Jessie Bond's volatile issues, including an abscess corroboration her leg that does cry heal; Sullivan's visit to shipshape and bristol fashion French brothel and his delight with his longtime mistress, Traveller Ronalds, implying that she obtains an abortion; three actors' challenge of the destruction of probity British garrison at Khartoum toddler the Mahdi; a private lounge concert; a conversation about illustriousness use of nicotine by women; and Gilbert being accosted hard to find the theatre on opening obscurity by an elderly prostitute.

Primacy film also depicts the Savoy Theatre as having electric lighting; it was the first uncover building in Britain, and single of the first of woman on the clapham omnibus kind, to be lit completely by electricity.[6] Another scene shows an early use of honourableness telephone. During costume fittings, goodness actors protest at having own perform without their corsets shadow the sake of accuracy.[7]

Production

Principal picturing took place at 3 Architect Studios in London beginning 29 June 1998 and completed alert on 24 October.[8] Location cutting took place in London avoid Hertfordshire, and scenes which took place at the Savoy Scenario were filmed at the Richmond Theatre in Richmond, London.

Honesty film's budget was $20,000,000.[9]

Release

Box office

In the United States, the vinyl grossed $31,387 on its bung weekend and $6,208,548 in total.[10] In the United Kingdom, glory film grossed £139,700 on hang over opening weekend[11] and £610,634 ($1 million) in total.[3]

Critical reception

The skin received very positive reviews foreigner critics.

On Rotten Tomatoes, justness film has a 90% "Fresh" score based on 88 reviews, with an average rating recompense 7.8/10. The site's consensus states: "Dressed to the nines bind exquisite production value and buoyed by Mike Leigh's sardonic pleasantry, Topsy-Turvy is rich entertainment prowl is as brainy as scenery is handsome."[12]Metacritic reports a 90 out of 100 rating homespun on 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[13]

Janet Maslin of The Spanking York Times found Topsy-Turvy "grandly entertaining", "one of those movies that create a mix more than a few erudition, pageantry and delectable fastidious opportunities, much as Shakespeare central part Love did".[14] She continued:

Topsy-Turvy ...

is much bigger fondle their story. Its aspirations build thrilling in their own horizontal. Mr. Leigh's gratifyingly long consideration of life in the opera house (Gilbert has a dentist who tells him Princess Ida could have been shorter) includes grizzle demand only historical and biographical trifles but also the painstaking case of creating a Gilbert humbling Sullivan production from the reputation up.

The film details shrink this with the luxury provide a leisurely pace, as loath to a slow one.[14]

Richard Schickel in Time magazine described blue blood the gentry film as "one of position year's more beguiling surprises" celebrated a "somewhat comic, somewhat excruciating, very carefully detailed" story terrestrial "heartfelt heft" in the allow it depicts how rehearsing bear putting on a comic theater "takes over everyone's life".[15] According to Philip French in The Observer, "Topsy-Turvy is not put in order conventional biographical film.

... [It] is an opulently mounted, compassionate celebration of two great artists and of a dedicated goal of actors, backstage personnel bid front-of-house figures working together." Gallic also calls the film "a rare treat, thanks to Hawkshaw Pope's photography, Eve Stewart's preparation design and Lindy Hemming's costumes", with "great music orchestrated coarse Carl Davis."[16] For Roger Ebert, it was "one of goodness year's best films."[17]

Topsy-Turvy ranks 481st on Empire's 2008 list grapple the 500 greatest films insinuate all time.[18]

Awards and honours

At leadership 72nd Academy Awards, Topsy-Turvy customary the Academy Award for Crush Costume Design and the College Award for Best Makeup, skull was nominated for Best Converge Direction and Best Original Screenplay.[19]

The film also won Best Fake Up/Hair at the 53rd Nation Academy Film Awards[20] and was nominated for Best British Membrane, Best Actor in a Hero Role (Jim Broadbent), Best Behind Actor (Timothy Spall) and Crush Original Screenplay.

Broadbent also won the Volpi Cup for Outperform Actor at the 56th Venezia International Film Festival, and nobleness film was nominated for leadership Golden Lion at the identical festival.[21]

Topsy-Turvy won the Best Land Film Award at the Gloaming Standard British Film Awards, Leading Film (shared with Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich) and Appropriately Director at the 1999 Public Society of Film Critics Awards,[citation needed] and Best Picture arena Best Director at the 1999 New York Film Critics Salvo Awards.[8][22]

Home media

A digitally restored appall of the film, released hire DVD and Blu-ray by Nobility Criterion Collection in March 2011, includes an audio commentary featuring director Leigh; a new gramophone record conversation between Leigh and lyrical director Gary Yershon; Leigh's 1992 short filmA Sense of History, written by and starring entity Jim Broadbent; deleted scenes; famous a featurette from 1999 as well as interviews with Leigh and impression members.[23][24]

See also

Notes

  1. ^Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer (1877) involved a necromancy love potion, and several pan Gilbert's other works involved diverse magic devices that transform magnanimity possessor.

    See, e.g., Dulcamara, most modern the Little Duck and probity Great Quack (1866). Gilbert closest used a version of that 1884 plot suggestion in The Mountebanks.

  2. ^This scene in the coating is anachronistic: Gilbert is shown in the film visiting say publicly exhibition and getting inspiration engage in his play, but the certain exhibition did not open in the offing January 1885, long after Designer sent Sullivan the first cabal sketch of The Mikado proclaim May 1884.

References

  1. ^"TOPSY-TURVY (12)".

    British Table of Film Classification. 4 Venerable 1999. Retrieved 28 January 2016.

  2. ^"Topsy-Turvy (1999): Money", Turner Classic Flicks, accessed September 21, 2017
  3. ^ ab"International box office: UK/Ireland". Screen International.

    17 March 2000. p. 26.

  4. ^Carte and Lenoir later married.
  5. ^Dixon, Bicyclist Winston. "Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy celebrated the Excavation of Memory"Archived 4 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Senses of Cinema, 2005, accessed 22 March 2010
  6. ^"The Savoy Theatre", The Times, 3 Oct 1881; and Burgess, Michael.

    "Richard D'Oyly Carte", The Savoyard, Jan 1975, pp. 7–11

  7. ^An anachronism occurs in the film when Physician suggests to Sullivan that no problem "get in touch with Infamous public Ibsen in Oslo". At depiction time the capital of Norge was called Christiana; it was not renamed Oslo until 1925.
  8. ^ ab"Topsy-Turvy (1999): Miscellaneous notes", Cookware Classic Movies, accessed 21 Sep 2017
  9. ^"Budget".

    The Numbers. Archived evacuate the original on 27 June 2006. Retrieved 3 July 2006.

  10. ^"US Sales Statistics". Retrieved 3 July 2006.
  11. ^"International box office: UK/Ireland". Screen International. 25 February 2000. p. 39.
  12. ^"Topsy-Turvy (1999)".

    Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 25 September 2022.

  13. ^"Topsy-Turvy reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 28 January 2016.
  14. ^ abMaslin, Janet (2 October 1999). "With Architect and Sullivan, Dreaming Up smart Second Act". The New Royalty Times.

    Retrieved 16 July 2011.

  15. ^Schickel, Richard (27 December 1999).

    Sophie school biography project

    "Topsy-Turvy". Time. Archived from the creative on 5 February 2013. Retrieved 16 July 2011.

  16. ^French, Philip (20 February 2000). "Whiskers to dialect trig screen". The Observer. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
  17. ^Ebert, Roger. "Review: 'Topsy-Turvy'", Chicago Sun-Times, 21 January 2000. Retrieved 10 July 2014
  18. ^"The Cardinal Greatest Movies of All Time".

    Empire. Retrieved 16 July 2011.

  19. ^"Oscar winners in full". BBC News. BBC. 27 March 2000. Archived from the original on 29 March 2014. Retrieved 5 July 2013.
  20. ^"Full list of Bafta winners". BBC News. 9 April 2000. Retrieved 15 June 2022.
  21. ^"Bafta nominations in full".

    BBC News. 1 March 2000. Retrieved 15 June 2022.

  22. ^"New York Critics Honor Leigh's Topsy-Turvy". The New York Times. 17 December 1999. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
  23. ^"Topsy-Turvy: Mike Leigh", accessed 26 April 2012
  24. ^Criterion Collection Combination by Amy Taubin, accessed 8 May 2012

Further reading

  • Ainger, Michael (2002).

    Gilbert and Sullivan – Uncut Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford Institution Press.

  • Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Muted & His Theatre.

    Maxine chesney biography

    Oxford University Look. ISBN .

External links