Review: Björk at Langley Park

Björk – Cornucopia at Langley Park
Friday, March 3, 2023

Since first entering the public spotlight as lead-singer of The Sugarcubes in the late 1980s, Icelandic singer Björk has been a restless and imaginative innovator, keen to explore and work across a multitude of disciplines. Always on the move and eager to explore as her artistic will has found fit, it does not seem out of place that her debut theatrical production, Cornucopia, is the most extravagant embodiment of her creative soul to date.

At its core, Cornucopia is an elaborate production from Björk that serves as both an emotional and political plea for future action to ensure the resilience of planet Earth. Rather fittingly, Cornucopia found its home amongst nature in Perth, housed in a specially built 5,000-seat capacity tent that sat atop the grass of Langley Park between the CBD’s skyscrapers and the Swan River. These performances were an Australian exclusive, marking a strong return by the Perth Festival to inject art back into the centre of the city after several lean years due to COVID precautions. 

Cornucopia originally took its cues from Björk’s 2017 release, Utopia, but is now home to pieces from last year’s Fossora, as well as a couple of more well known tracks; Post‘s Isobel and Hidden Place from 2001’s Vespertine, which are reimagined for the show. Together, the songs proffer a Utopian dream of Björk’s for technology to enhance rather than desecrate the limited resources of Earth. Musical director Bergur Thorisson oversees the performance’s musical numbers, with assistance from percussionist Emanuel Delago-Norz and harpist Katie Buckley and Icelandic flute septet, Viibra, who are fairy-like in the loosely choreographed way they parade and interact with each other and their instruments across the stage.

Besides the music, the biggest selling point for Cornucopia is its multimedia element which comes from co-director and film-maker, Lucrecia Martel. His visualisations are spectacular, ranging from projections of fractal rainbows to feathered human hybrids that elucidate the theme of the performance and serve to let the audience imagine the world that Björk is attempting to describe in her songs. 

The subtlety of the show’s themes were broken between the main performance and encore, as text rolled on screen before a taped message from Greta Thunberg was played, both requesting urgent action on climate change. The directness of these messages was welcome, and helped to frame the performance and its themes, particularly as Björk’s lyrics were often lost in the mass of music. Given their prominence in her work, it would have been nice if text containing all or parts of her lyrics had also somehow been displayed.

While feeling familiar, due to its inclusion of themes common in Björk’s rich catalogue, (namely love and human behaviour), Cornucopia felt new with its focus on the Earth and its dream for the future. As a result, Cornucopia is very real, and is the closest thing to a blueprint for the future that many have ever seen.

MICHAEL HOLLICK

Photos by Santiago Felipe