Get out there and break a leg, Danny, dear

Any show, from an amateur performance of Bugsy Malone to the West End opening of a new musical, comes with many problems and sacrifices. Sometimes the best thing to do is sacrifice the actors, sometimes it’s best to sacrifice the set and costumes. But when a show comes with a budget of £27 million and the knowledge that the whole world will be watching, you may end up sacrificing yourself.

Which is why I admire Danny Boyle and Stephen Daldry, the director and producer of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. Or Team DanDaldry as I like to call them.

I’m sure after a night of creative passion Danny, Stephen and Seb were very excited by Danny’s concept for the Isles of Wonder ceremony. There must also have been a huge amount of trepidation — they are creating the most expensive and important one-off production in the UK’s history. And they, like me, will know only too well the problems, pressures and often conflicting demands of staging something this spectacular.

Putting on a show and trying to stay true to your vision is like having 25 children and trying to keep them all happy, except here there’s a cast of 10,000 “children”. On top of the performers there is the technical team, lights, sound, make-up, costume, crew, front-of-house staff, directors, producers, actors, writers, unions — the list goes on. Most shows tell one, simple story. The opening ceremony has to express as much of the history and culture of the British people as possible, without offending athletes and officials from countries with whom we might once have been at war, dear.

And the “children” who have to be satisfied number into the thousands. The wishes of the International Olympic Committee have to be accommodated, and a vast amount of boring protocol and ritual worked into the ceremony. Then there are the demands of sponsors and government, and the added pressure of keeping the nation happy. Something which only Stephen Fry has mastered up until now, dear. But even Mr Fry would be hard-pressed to satisfy the anticipated global TV audience of four billion.

Danny Boyle has, unprecedentedly, insisted on having his own TV director for the ceremony, to control his singular vision. He’s very secretive about what this is, but suggests it will express all aspects of the British character, including humour — hard to do in a venue that seats 80,000. Daldry, for his part, insists he’s just a facilitator and the ceremony is “Danny’s show”. A useful position if things go wrong.

Usually the first hurdle in putting on a show is cost. Luckily with a budget of £27 million (around one third of the total £81 million for the Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies) Boyle can hire not only a pantomime cow but also some rather wonderful sheep. A lot of the human performers are appearing for free and this has left plenty of money for a giant cloud that produces rain (if only they’d planned the event a week earlier …). While most directors like to make things simple for themselves, Boyle is working with three great traditional enemies of creativity: children, animals and rain.

A West End show has a preview period, enabling the creators to tweak and finesse it, in the hope it will then run for months, years or hopefully decades, and make as much money as possible. Team DanDaldry have just two dress rehearsals before they face a world full of critics. It’s cross your fingers and hope it’ll be all right on the night. I have seen West End shows costing one or two million grind to a halt when a flying rig goes wrong or a light blows. In Chitty Chitty Bang Bang the car used to get jammed in mid-flight, and the sets in Les Misérables and Oliver! sometimes got stuck. Some shows involving complex staging or dangerous stunts have had to delay opening for several days, such as a recent tour of Zorro and the West End transfer of RSC’s musical Matilda. Team DanDaldry have no such option, although the fire effects, flying sequences and dancing NHS nurses of the opening ceremony involve millions more potential pitfalls.

I understand why DanDaldry want the ceremony to start at 9pm — when conditions are perfect for effects and fireworks — but this adds severe pressures of time. The ceremony cannot be more than three hours long, otherwise there will be lots of stranded spectators trying to break into the Olympic B&B village for an overnight stay. Health and safety is another huge consideration. I imagine G4S’s problems worsened when recruits realised they might have to body-search farmyard animals to check they weren’t actually terrorists, dear.

Everyone has been trying to keep the details of the ceremony under wraps — but from the rumours I’ve heard this is what I’m expecting: