Breathtaking artfulness ushers in Olympics with a flourish

With it was the ever-bending David Beckham. The Olympics were heading for a change not just of place, but pace.

So, last night, it came to pass. London's opener was not bold and brash, like Sydney's, nor marked by simple elegance, like Athens', and it certainly was not an attempt to wow the world by its sheer scale, like Beijing's.

Essentially, it was a piece of theatre, grand, but also imaginative, charming, warm, subtle, funny and sometimes exquisitely ironic. It sent these Games on their warely not so much with a bang as with a flourish.

The last round of applause for the night was for the athletes and the Games themselves, but the first — off stage to television viewers — was for a flock of live sheep. That, surely, was a first.

The rolling game of oneupsmanship between host cities, each trying to outdo the last's crescendo of tricks, might be over. The compulsory elements — shimmering lights, invisibly suspended whirlers and twirlers, fireworks — were kept to a minimum. But that is not to say that the era of lavish and extravagant productions is finished. Far from it; no fewer than 10,000 volunteers formed this cast. Measured that way, it was as big as Beijing, and as well drilled, but less obvious about it. But it did cost £27million.

The stage was set with breathtaking artfulness. The sprawling Olympic precint is oddly sparse — stadia stand in it like cacti in a desert — but the main arena was a vision of bucolic splendour, ''this green and pleasant land'' re-imagined. Dotting it were live cows, sheep, goats and geese, a doleful draughthorse, dozens of rustics at work and play, village green cricketers — faithful down to the detail that each new batsman took guard — pantomime footballers in knickerbockers, gentlewomen with parasols, ramblers and children gathered around a maypole, all in the shadow of a spreading oak. Clouds, carefully tethered, floated; how these mock-ups must have tempted fate in latterly rain drenched England!

In director the febrile imagination of director Danny Boyle — of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire fame — this was the first of three great sequences. Before our much-rubbed eyes, olde Englande suddenly was dismantled. In its place emerged a grim industrial landscape, complete with towering, soot-blackened chimneys — and sweeps.

Logistically, this was a coup equal to the staging of the Games. If in the next fortnight, London is so dextrous with crowd management, the Games will be a roaring success, but the initial signs are bothersome. Then as the chimneys were demounted, the Olympic rings manifested, horizontally, glowing and showering sparks, as if straight out of a forge. Boyle, channelling Milton and Paradise Lost, called this sequence Pandemonium.

From there, the humour changed and the pace quickened. Boyle was conscious of not overplaying the nostalgia and gentility, also of glossing over the much bolder and cheekier style of the latter-day UK, as publicly mischevious as it once was only and strictly behind closed doors.

The once stiff upper lip, now softened, has become sometimes a smirk, sometimes a smile and sometimes a delightful wry and dimply grin. This was Boyle's modern sequence. The ceremony blossomed into a joyful romp through all the meanings and implications of British. Boyle realised it through representations of his two favourite media, music and cinema; the UK has rich and bountiful history in both. The tempo by now was flickering, madcap, zany. A very British sense of absurdity threaded it.

Boyle would admit that he expected many to be baffled; he hoped they would also be enchanted. Shakespeare echoed, of course: the loose theme of the show was Isles of Wonder, adapted from The Tempest, and the crowd was led in its lines by cheery Mechanicals, a name borrowed from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

There were nods to every era and icon, and the Brits have had so many, in so many fields. Not the least in the parade was the London Underground map, surely the best world's best-known schematic. There were also touches that even might be called loaded. Boyle would deny an agenda, saying he wanted only to be true to British values. But his piece de resistance was a vast, luminous and affectionate tribute to the NHS, Britain's public health scheme. The beds were fluoroescently make-believe, but the nurses mostly were real — and the Americans baffled, presumably.

At an Olympics opener, there is so much to do and so little time; grandiose protocols demand it. The Queen seemed somehow to be inserted, perhaps to allow for her bedtime; this was her second big party in a month, after all, and she is 86.

At last, Boyle's rapturous transport arrived at the opener's formal rites and solemnities: the entrance of the athletes and the lighting of the flame.

If a theme could be inferred, it might have be that post-Empire, post-war Britain had lost its way, but now was baaaack. It is not true, of course — look at the economy, already severely stressed, and soon with a pile of Olympic bills to pay (ultimately, Greece buckled beneath them). But if nothing else, the Olympics are an opiate, making one country, in the first instance, feel better about itself for a while, and ultimately the world, too, and last night's drum roll surely did just that.