History Film / TopsyTurvy

After earning disappointing reviews for ''Theatre/PrincessIda'', Sir Arthur Sullivan (Creator/AllanCorduner) decides to unilaterally dissolve his partnership with William Gilbert (Creator/JimBroadbent) creating comic operas for the Savoy Theatre. To get his mind off his troubles, Gilbert's wife, Kitty (Creator/LesleyManville), drags him to the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and he is inspired to write ''Theatre/TheMikado''. What follows is a comprehensive story of how the play was developed such as how it was written, how Sullivan prepared the music and the singing and how Gilbert dealt with the choreography, costuming and dealing with actors and their occasional moments of temperament.

** Gilbert, indignant at Sullivan's unwillingness to set his proposed magic potion piece, encourages him to contact Mr. Ibsen in Oslo if he wants to write a more "dull" opera. Oslo was called Kristiania at the time. Not until 1925 would the city revert to the medieval name by which Gilbert called it. When Mike Leigh found this out, at the Venice Film Festival where the completed film was being screened, he was mortified: he prides himself on exhaustive research.

* BilingualDialogue: Numerous characters drop into French in the course of ordinary conversation, the most conspicuous example being Madame Leon, the wardrobe mistress, who speaks mostly in French despite her honking working-class London accent.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: ''The Mikado'' is a huge success, but Kitty Gilbert is still sad about the fact that they don't have children; Fanny is pregnant by Sullivan but they know that she'll have to have an abortion, as the scandal of her being an unmarried mother would be too great; Leonora is still lonely, and a title card says that Sullivan did eventually write a grand opera, ''Ivanhoe'', but that almost nobody performs it anymore.]]

* CampStraight: Lely and Temple, both of whom are happily married to their wives but, when chatting in the dressing room, delightfully… theatrical.
* CloudCuckooLander: Mr D'Auban, (Creator/AndySerkis) the choreographer.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: William Gilbert has to deal with an actor who has a hissy fit over his costume which seems too "revealing," even though by modern audiences' eyes, it is demure. Furthermore, with MethodActing stars like Creator/DustinHoffman and Creator/MerylStreep becoming well known and respected for the lengths they will go to be in character, this actor sounds childishly unprofessional.
** During a lunch meeting, Grossmith and Barrington make some extremely racist comments about Africans, and are mildly rebuked by Lely (who, being Scottish, has certainly been the subject of English racism himself). Such attitudes were rather common in Victorian England, and thinking of Africans as a bunch of half-naked savages living up in trees was part of the justification for [[WhiteMansBurden British Imperialism]].
* DepravedDentist: A dentist pulls one of Gilbert's teeth apparently without anesthetic.[[note]]TruthInTelevision, frighteningly enough, as modern anesthetics weren't due to be invented for a few more decades.[[/note]] To make matters worse, though, the dentist then goes on to remark that ''Theatre/PrincessIda'' is "too long"-- a point Gilbert is sore about -- while Gilbert has his mouth forced closed so he's unable to respond!
* DoubleEntendre:
-->'''Barker''': I am going out for some Italian hokey-pokey and I care not who knows it.[[note]]It's a very hot day and he means that he's going to get some [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_pokey_(ice_cream) ice cream]].[[/note]]

* FullyClothedNudity: Durward Lely complains that his costume as Nanki-Poo (a short jacket and black tights) renders him practically naked, and only relents when Gilbert convinces him that the Japanese did not wear trousers.
* FunctionalAddict: Grossmith, who despite taking heroin right before the first performance manages play Ko-ko just fine, though Sullivan does fix his stare on him when Grossmith starts looking unsteady after his verse of ''"The criminal cried as he dropped him down"''.

* GirlFriday: Helen Lenoir to Richard D'Oyly Carte. [[note]]When D'Oyly Carte's wife died, he and Helen were married. She took over the running of the opera company, while he concentrated on the Savoy Hotel.[[/note]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: Grossmith, Barrington and Lely have lunch, at which they discuss the fall of Khartoum.[[note]]Charles George Gordon, Governor-General of the Sudan, had gone against all advice and retained a force there of about a thousand men, who were besieged by a local Muslim leader, Muhammad Ahmad, and his forces. Ahmad had offered Gordon the chance to surrender, but Gordon refused, and in the end Ahmad's forces overran the British forces and Gordon and almost all his men were killed.[[/note]] Grossmith and Barrington are booked to have a chat with D'Oyly Carte about their salaries, at which they intended to push for generous pay rises, but Lely isn't booked to have such a chat. Grossmith and Barrington make extremely racist remarks about the natives in Khartoum, but Lely (who's Scottish) mildly reminds them of a massacre of the Scots by the English. Grossmith and Barrington indulge in an extra dozen oysters, but Lely, who's having the sole, declines to have any. At their respective chats with D'Oyly Carte, Grossmith and Barrington are struck down with oyster poisoning and fail to obtain their pay rises, while Lely is perfectly healthy.
* LastNameBasis: By the time of the film, Gilbert and Sullivan have worked together for thirteen years but still refer to each other by their surnames (this was [[TruthInTelevision normal]] in Victorian Britain).

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Richard D’Oyly Carte, boss of the whole company. He offers his actors pay rises and is genuinely concerned when their attempts to wangle even bigger pay rises are interrupted by bouts of food poisoning. When he warns Leonora that she mustn’t let her drink problem interfere with her acting, he does so in the most delicate way, and when she promises to keep it under control, he is genuinely pleased. When negotiations between Gilbert & Sullivan have broken down, he even invites them to lunch, but they don’t go. He never raises his voice, and where necessary, he lets his sidekick Helen do the talking.

* SexlessMarriage: William and Kitty Gilbert is portrayed as sexless and rather strained, particularly as she wants children and he's not prepared to have any. It's questionable how much of this was true in real life, where the Gilberts were reportedly a doting couple. By contrast, Sullivan and his lover, Fanny Ronalds, are highly sexual as well as affectionate, and arrange an abortion when she accidentally falls pregnant.

After earning disappointing reviews for ''Theatre/PrincessIda'', Sir Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) decides to unilaterally dissolve his partnership with William Gilbert (Creator/JimBroadbent) creating comic operas for the Savoy Theatre. To get his mind off his troubles, Gilbert's wife, Kitty (Creator/LesleyManville), drags him to the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and he is inspired to write ''Theatre/TheMikado''. What follows is a comprehensive story of how the play was developed such as how it was written, how Sullivan prepared the music and the singing and how Gilbert dealt with the choreography, costuming and dealing with actors and their occasional moments of temperament.

** Gilbert, indignant at Sullivan's unwillingness to set his proposed magic potion piece, encourages him to contact Mr. Ibsen in Oslo if he wants to write a more "dull" opera. Oslo was called Kristiania at the time. Not until 1925 would the city revert to the medieval name by which Gilbert called it.

* ToneShift: The first half of the film dramatises the stagnation of Gilbert & Sullivan's creative partnership, with Sullivan becoming increasingly impatient with Gilbert's ideas, or rather (as Sullivan feels) Gilbert's lack of fresh ideas, and the two lead characters become more and more bad-tempered (although this establishes their characters: Sullivan deals with their joint CreatorBreakdown by going to Paris and living it up, whereas Gilbert deals with it by staying at home and becoming ever more grumpy.) As soon as Gilbert attends the Japanese exhibition, becomes inspired to write ''The Mikado'' and reads the resulting to libretto to an appreciative Sullivan, the whole tone of the film shifts into comedy and stays there throughout the ensuing rehearsal sequences. [[spoiler: It shifts back into drama at the end, as we see that the enormous success of the show hasn't necessarily fixed the characters' lives and that some of them are just as messed-up as they were to begin with.]]

* ShoutOut:
** Gilbert complains that Sullivan wants to write a serious opera about "a prostitute dying of consumption in a garret," an obvious nod to Verdi's ''Theatre/LaTraviata''.
** Gilbert also drops quotes from Shakespeare into his conversation, as he was known to do.

-->'''Barker''': I'm going out for some Italian hokey-pokey and I care not who knows it.[[note]]It's a very hot day and he means that he's going to get some ice cream.[[/note]]

** During a lunch meeting, Grossmith and Temple make some extremely racist comments about Africans, and are mildly rebuked by Lely (who, being Scottish, has certainly been the subject of English racism himself). Such attitudes were rather common in Victorian England, and thinking of Africans as a bunch of half-naked savages living up in trees was part of the justification for [[WhiteMansBurden British Imperialism]].

* {{Bowdlerize}}: The film omits the third stanza of the Mikado's solo. This may be partly for time considerations, but also probably has something to do with the fact that the verse as originally performed contains an [[NWordPrivileges N-word reference]], which was eventually expunged in 1940.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: William Gilbert has to deal with an actor who has a hissy fit over his costume which seems too "revealing," even though by modern audiences' eyes, it is demure (a short jacket and tights). Furthermore, with MethodActing stars like Creator/DustinHoffman and Creator/MerylStreep becoming well known and respected for the lengths they will go to be in character, this actor sounds childishly unprofessional.

* DeliberateValuesDissonance: William Gilbert has to deal with an actor who has a hissy fit over his costume which seems too "revealing," even though by modern audiences' eyes, it is demure. Furthermore, with MethodActing stars like Creator/DustinHoffman and Creator/MerylStreep becoming well known and respected for the lengths they will go to be in character, this actor sounds childishly unprofessional.

After earning disappointing reviews for ''Theatre/PrincessIda'', Sir Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) decides to unilaterally dissolve his partnership with William Gilbert (Creator/JimBroadbent) creating comic operas for the Savoy Theatre. To get his mind off his troubles, Gilbert's wife, Kitty, drags him to the Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and he is inspired to write ''Theatre/TheMikado''. What follows is a comprehensive story of how the play was developed such as how it was written, how Sullivan prepared the music and the singing and how Gilbert dealt with the choreography, costuming and dealing with actors and their occasional moments of temperament.