When is a theatrical event not a theatrical event? It’s an interesting question, and one that could easily have multiple answers, but for my money, Björk’s Cornucopia – playing at The Shed, Manhattan’s gleaming new $475 million arts venue located in the swanky, if not yet completed, Hudson Yards development – falls just the wrong side of the line. Not that, strictly speaking, it was billed as more than a “staged concert”, nor does it lacks theatricality – it comes complete with enervating projected visuals, majestic sound and lighting, dazzling costumes and a host of participants, from a 50-voice young persons’ choir to a dancing flute septet. What it lacks, however, is any sense of dramatic through line, perhaps the reason it lost the gifted British director John Tiffany (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) a couple of months out from the premiere. None of the above is exactly a bad thing, but with a greater cohesive vision one senses it might have been much more.

Björk’s Cornucopia. Photo © Santiago Felipe, 2019. Courtesy One Little Indian/The Shed

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