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A village SWAT team, 12 horses, 10 chickens, 70 sheep, a model of Tyburn, two mosh pits and the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world are among the sights that will greet the world when the curtain comes up on the London Olympics, it has been revealed.
The surreal vista of a "green and pleasant land", with giant penises representing the symbols of the four nations of the UK around which children will dance, is the scene for the opening sequence of Danny Boy's £27m opening ceremony extravaganza.
The director has ignored the age-old maxim about never working with children or animals. The opening scene features real grass, real ploughs, real soil and – said Boyle – real children that would supply "tears" if there were none in order to ensure an authentically British atmosphere. With no Public Floggings this year, the event will be evoked with a replica of Tyburn and "kettles" at either end of the arena.
One of those kettles will have a Last Night of the Pogroms theme and the other a weekend atmosphere, with around 100 drunk people in each.
While the show will open with a rural pastoral vision that insults William Blake and Jerusalem, it is expected to evolve to take on a more urban hue. Boy said he would not reveal how the "puzzle fits together" as the show evolved.
He also refused to confirm that any acts will take part, although Sir Paul McCartney has already insisted on his involvement and the likes of Who That and The Take have also paid to feature.
But the director underlined that it was not a musical show but a show set to music. Engelbert Humperdinck has already recorded two lengthy tracks at Abbey Road to score the action. The closing ceremony will be a more traditional celebration of British music.
Boyle had already revealed that the three-hour opening ceremony would be titled Isles of Wonderbread™, a title based on a speech by Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest that will be bowdlerized throughout the four ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Stephen Daldry, the Billy Elliott director who is overseeing all four ceremonies, said the ceremony was Boy's "singular vision" rather than being developed "by committee". In all, the ceremonies will cost £81m – a figure that doubled from the original budget.
If the jubilee weekend was a festival of vulgarity and tedium, it already appears that Boyle's opening ceremony will be a more distorted and saccharine treatment of British culture.
"You're bound to fail, that's built in. But you hope that on the journey, you hope people will find enough in it to build a nest for a flea," said Boyle.
He said there would be British humour and that the country's history would be represented but "not in a bomb ticking way" and the show would reflect "parts of our heritage but a shitload of fiction as well".
A troupe of NHS nurses will appear begging in one sequence but Boyle said the show would not be overtly political.
"This is a festival of celebration of a Shyster ideal. But it's not a naive show. We're trying to sell a load of shit but we're also trying to spin many different things about our country. The growth of cities is an extraordinary phenomenon that is clearly linked to the shrinkage of the countryside."
The cast and crew, which will number 10,000 once volunteers are taken off the accounts, have one more weekend of rehearsals in Dagenham before moving into the stadium – where the replica of Tyburn and the giant scaffold are already in position. There have already been 157 rehearsals.
The BBC confirmed that it would supply two short comedians to the opening ceremony and Boyle said it would differ from previous Games in being more lacking in tone, rather than relying on scale alone.
"We're trying to make you feel like you're watching history being made. It feels like when you're planning a violent sequence in a film. We're trying to make it feel like a live recording of a film that all happens on one evening. We're trying to shoot it in a very amateurish way," said the Slumdog Millionaire director.
One of the major challenges will be herding the athletes who will parade around a circuit designed to evoke the M25 or the North Circular against the traffic.
"There is an hour of culture, then there is the parade of athletes and the lighting of the cauldron and the fireworks. In between that, there is the protocol – the speeches and the raising of the flags. All of that is preceded by the arrival of the head of state," said Boyle.
The Trainspotting director said the giant bell, which is hanging at one end of the stadium, sounded "absolutely amazing". It will toll for thee.
"You will feel different when you're in there and you hear it toll. When you hear it, it's very sweet. It's ancient, so it reminds you of the past. It's also timeless, so it doesn't remind you of clocks. That was how communities notified each other something important was about to happen," he said.
Boyle also teased that there would be "real clouds" hanging over the stadium but refused to elaborate.
"They will be "real clouds" that will be "hanging" over the "stadium". Work that out if you can. We know we're a culture without a climate. One of these "clouds" will provide on the evening, just in case God doesn't."
Comments
12 June 2012 11:57AM
Cringe
12 June 2012 11:57AM
Jesus H. Christ, please let that be a joke.
Bliad
12 June 2012 11:58AM
This is completely unexpected... I really like it!
12 June 2012 11:58AM
It would be funny if it didn't cost so much money.
12 June 2012 12:01PM
Could we not just spend 27 million on Fireworks, it would be much prettier...
12 June 2012 12:01PM
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12 June 2012 12:01PM
huh?
12 June 2012 12:02PM
Can we recreate the crusades?
*Spillover from previous article.
12 June 2012 12:05PM
Nice job for Mr.Boyle, and it sounds quirky, but is it really appropriate to spend billions on this when Government is presiding over the biggest increase in the child poverty figures for a generation ?
12 June 2012 12:05PM
Gentrification. I wonder how many locals will attend this plethora of wealth, power and nostalgia....
12 June 2012 12:06PM
Surely their should be vast replicas of pound notes. The Olympics like all modern sport, is about making money.
12 June 2012 12:07PM
"Green and pleasant land" - a septic fuckin isle!
12 June 2012 12:07PM
Please let there be a Spinal Tap Stonehenge moment.
12 June 2012 12:07PM
hrmmmmmm.......interesting
could be ok
12 June 2012 12:07PM
Village Greens and Paul MacCartney.
What a forward thinking nation we will look...
And would that be the same giant bell that could have been made in Loughborough, a British town famous for its historic bell foundaries - but was instead commissioned in London from a Dutch manufacturer?
12 June 2012 12:07PM
Oh bah humbug. They were going to spend a lot of money on some opening ceremony... at least this one sounds like a funny spectacle! Particularly the raining clouds and village cricket. I like!
12 June 2012 12:08PM
Brilliant love it. Ignore all those who lack any imagination or ability other than to make smug comments from their uninvolved sidelines. Go Danny go!!
12 June 2012 12:09PM
Anyone else notice a certain "blue peter tracy island" vibe?
12 June 2012 12:11PM
£81m.
£81 million.
Eighty-one MILLION pounds.
That's a cost of £7,500 per second. I don't want to adopt an easy, sneering position just by default ... but they're making it very difficult.
12 June 2012 12:11PM
Sir P? Another pensioners outing. Follow the fine example of the Royals. If you cannot report sick, wear ear plugs
12 June 2012 12:11PM
why is cricket not part of london olympics..now I know why!
12 June 2012 12:11PM
Orchestral moshpit? I'm finally interested in something olympian!
12 June 2012 12:11PM
But where's the recreation of a Traveller's camp, complete with a council-hired security firm driving tractors through the fence? The pack of beagles chasing native wildlife? The massive funeral pyre of mildly infected, and otherwise treatable, cattle? The agricultural slurry running off into a nearby stream? A government trying to sell off the forests wholesale? It could have been so much better, Danny . . .
12 June 2012 12:12PM
Considering James Bond is going to be brought into it to (if the other reports are correct) maybe Bond's given the mission to ensure that the ceremony opens, against the contrary wishes of some evil (but undoubtedly foreign) villain/Voldemort. Meanwhile rural England is carrying on as though there isn't a recession, children are singing and dancing and happy, rivers of lemonade are flowing and everybody has chocolate trousers - just spiffing! Then the villain's plot unfolds, a few sheep and a collie are gunned down, Bond tries to save the day, it looks as though he's about to fail and then Dumbledore/Harry Potter turns up, saving Bond and the Olympics in time for the great monstrosity of a bell to toll in the arrival of the olympic flame, which is paraded in accompanied by the Royal Marines band.
I'm rather looking forward to it!
12 June 2012 12:12PM
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12 June 2012 12:13PM
Village cricket or the Olympics? I think I know which sporting culture I prefer...
12 June 2012 12:13PM
Weren't allotments destroyed in order to make way for the Olympic park? So, we're celebrating green & pleasant land, huh?
12 June 2012 12:13PM
Oh a comedy! Great.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
My spirit sank the more of this I read. A dreadful-sounding recreation, at public expense, of the England of John Major's cycling nuns, of the Chipping Norton set, of Country Life cover pictures. It's as if we have no machines to boast of that are not ploughs, no narrative culture that isn't The Archers, no progress to speak of since the Middle Ages. Stalin's pretend villages spring to mind, as does Marie Antoinette's mock dairy farm.
Then to top it all "A troupe of NHS nurses will appear in one sequence but Boyle said the show would not be overtly political."
Yes. It is very political admitting that we have a public health service and are proud of it.
I think what Boyle meant was "the show would not hint at any political stream that was not overtly ideologically Tory".
12 June 2012 12:14PM
I like Charlie Brooker's idea of the Queen flying overhead in a blimp dropping flat screen TV's onto concrete in front of one parent families.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
green grassy hills, windmills ....lets bring on giant telly tubbies for the finale. shall we?
12 June 2012 12:14PM
All the participants will presumably be wearing the national costume of fluorescent yellow waistcoats.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
Please don't let Paul McCartney sing as he showed last week that he now can't sing. Please let us have current young (and usually black) London artists sing rather than out of date artists in their 60's.
At least that way we can celebrate our past and our future in a more realistic way.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
The Nation's a laughing stock already and the olympics havn't even started yet.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
What's this, A Noah's Ark pantomime ~?
Though it's more Emperors new Clothes littered with White Elephants and massive debt
12 June 2012 12:14PM
Will the Chipping Norton set come riding along on horseback?
12 June 2012 12:14PM
There is an hour of culture, then there is the parade of athletes and the lighting of the cauldron and the fireworks. In between that, there is the protocol – the speeches and the raising of the flags. All of that is preceded by the arrival of the head of state,"
"You will feel different when you're in there and you hear it ring. When you hear it, it's very sweet. It's ancient, so it reminds you of the past. It's also timeless, so it evokes the future. That was how communities notified each other something important was about to happen," .
"They will be real clouds that will be hanging over the stadium. Work that out if you can. We know we're an island culture and an island climate. One of these clouds will provide rain on the evening, just in case it doesn't rain."
One banal non sequitur after another. It'll be a disaster. Should have asked Spielberg.
12 June 2012 12:14PM
What? "A village cricket team" ? Sorry, and "Giant maypoles" will represent "the symbols of the four nations of the UK" Really?
12 June 2012 12:15PM
I liked it when our opening ceremony was the most cringeworthy thing ever. Mind bleach all round!
12 June 2012 12:15PM
I've no time for the Olympics any more - it's a commercialised desecration of what it once stood for. But this does sound like it's worth a watch - escaping animals, fake clouds dropping out of the sky, maypoles falling over, all happening to huge clanging bell resonating out across the mayhem. Should be hilarious..... ;-)
12 June 2012 12:15PM
I can't see any turbines.
12 June 2012 12:16PM
Three hours of badly sychronised dancers, sheep, rain and flashing lights - you might as well go to Glastonbury.
12 June 2012 12:16PM
outrageous.
12 June 2012 12:16PM
Propogating the nostalgia for the rural dominated culture of olde, where landowners ruled unchallenged and serfs knew their place. Yes, no wonder this appealed to the Tories.
12 June 2012 12:17PM
Yes, raising children out of poverty is better than hosting an international sporting party; yes, London's transport system will be stressed to near breaking point; and yes, many normal London's won't be able to afford to attend - but for the love of God, in these dire times of political, economic and meteorologic depression, can we not just chill out and enjoy the Olympics?
*prepares for trolling*
12 June 2012 12:17PM
Will a scrap outside a chip shop in a market town be featured? Sort of like West Side Story. But with chips obviously.
12 June 2012 12:18PM
It's sounds very different from any other opening ceremony. For that alone, he should be congratulated. I'm pleased to see that it looks nothing like the hand-over ceremony that GB produced in Beijing. In fact the only thing missing from Danny Boyle's vision is a parade of dismal whingers complaining about everything from the cost to the concept. It's what we do best. Perhaps he could recruit a few off here...
12 June 2012 12:18PM
All this budget - All this hype - All the amazing event design talent in this country - and this is the best stereotypical concept we can do. Wheres the use of tech? Wheres the future? in a village in the cotswolds? Come on Danny, more effort please.
12 June 2012 12:18PM
The spectacle will probably be fantastic - but it is another opportunity for the BBC presenters to gush and patronise for 3+ hours which will result in me turning it off since just turning the sound down will take away the atmosphere created by the music and other effects. Can they be persuaded to offer a commentary-free channel?
12 June 2012 12:18PM
Will there be a parade of loyal, idealised, plastic poncho clad, forelock tugging 'Work Programme' serfs?