The Butterfly Effect

39658 original

As The Butterfly Effect begins, a tray laden with 28 wine glasses is set to ringing, and Erik Petersen steps to the microphone with his violin. He starts to play Vittorio Monti's 'Csardas', but within moments a string snaps, prompting a rapid key change and a valiant attempt to carry on. Then two more strings break, and from here Petersen segues neatly into the musical exploration of chaos theory which is the show's basic premise.

What follows is not so much a narrative as a series of loose tableaus which provide the opportunity for the Swedish trio behind The Butterfly Effect to create music in ever more off-the-wall ways. A bass constructed from a pair of skis; a sort of pedal-steel guitar which is really just a fretboard screwed to an old radio; a finely-tuned bicycle which doubles as a Jamaican steel-drum and a kind of harp – these, and Svante Drake's remarkable beat-boxing ability are the tools of Varieté Velociped's trade, and altogether it makes for hilarious viewing. By the time they get around to the promised Monti performance, it is on a makeshift instrument so ludicrous that the viewer feels quietly confident that Petersen is going to fail – only he doesn't.

The Butterfly Effect is at once delightfully ramshackle and astonishingly well put together. The trio are all gifted musicians, but one suspects they set out on this endeavour to see just how far they could push that talent. It is, essentially, an utterly virtuosic and infectiously carefree 45-minute botch-job, and an amazing spectacle to watch.