Alex Horne: Monsieur Butterfly

Some comedy sets are like machines. Themes, narratives, seemingly throwaway one-liners – all the bits whirr away in isolation for long stretches, only for a beautifully orchestrated finale, or an ingenious structural callback, to demonstrate how cleverly the whole thing was contrived. Alex Horne, a master engineer, has built a smoothly-efficient machine with Monsieur Butterfly, even if it lacks the ornateness of earlier efforts. The theme is fatherhood, and he tells a few sentimental stories that build to a heartwarming epiphany at the end; meanwhile, he scarcely tells a joke that doesn't reappear in altered form down the line.

What sets Horne's show apart is that while he's doing this, he's also casually assembling an actual, non-metaphorical machine out of planks and ladders and traffic cones and clockwork mice and audience members. It's a Rube Goldberg machine, one that does something simple—in this case, ringing a bell—in an incredibly convoluted way. Some of the machine's components, such as a toy squirrel, stand in for elements of the story he's telling, meaning the show's two dimensions are nicely integrated.

To somebody who has trouble typing and talking at the same time, watching Horne perspire gently as he eases a belt around a balloon without allowing a nail to burst it prematurely—all while miming a song about a horse—defies belief. A sign of how invested the audience becomes in Horne's task is the shrill urgency of the warnings that come when somebody spots that the belt has slipped off the balloon, or that the bowling ball has begun to roll slowly out of position. Monsieur Butterfly turns comedy into an edge-of-your-seat experience. It's a joy to behold.