London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony (Review)

Forget oohs and ahhs, think wows and wide eyed excitement. A £27m budget, a cast of 15,000 plus some very familiar faces ensured the audience remained gripped for the duration of last night's opening ceremony in London.

The opening ceremony carried viewers on a musical and literary journey through Britain’s heritage, from feudal to future. The show featured a recreation of the British countryside, including live farmyard animals, and covers key events including the industrial revolution and the creation of the NHS (National Health Service).

That narrative was wrapped around the story of two girls defying their parents for a night on the town aided by social media, their foray takes them through nightclubs playing music from the great decades of British pop starting in the 60s to the noughties. The show was a riot of color, noise, lasers and pyrotechnics but despite a near three hour running time, it still managed to surprise and entertain at most turns as musical sequences, light shows, audience interaction and video interludes ensured continuity between the scenes but the sheer scale of the production, the actors, the sets, the machinery, makes this a stunning spectacle.

The proud heritage of Britain and London was exposed on center stage and didn't fail rouse me into a patriotic stupor, and where Beijing dazzled with the detailed synchronization of what seemed an endless army of actors, London’s show cleverly emulated that Beijing effect with clever use of technology. Boyle's opening ceremony was the equal of Beijing and more.

He had the spectacle, non for important than an inspired vision of the five Olympic rings being forged by the workers of the industrial revolution. Boyle also had jokes and laughs; he had narrative, of a cheerfully loopy kind, with some anarchic fun, and cheeky comic turns from Daniel Craig, Rowan Atkinson and the Queen. 

The final half hour in which the semi-forgotten Arctic Monkeys played a genuinely incendiary two song set, Doreen Lawrence carried the Olympic flag and Steve Redgrave used the Olympic flame to light a giant cauldron made of torches did actively threaten to be perfect. But then good old Paul McCartney came along to play a faintly horrific but reasonably endearing version of ‘Hey Jude’ – Britishness restored.

In his wild, wacky and often hilarious Games kickoff, Boyle kept his promise, delivering something unique that acknowledged the nation’s people and its innovative creative spirit more than its leaders or its past as a grand empire. The director’s stock got a major boost when he won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, but this audacious show should bump it even higher.