REVIEW: Mothman: A Romance Musical ★★★★★ | Edfringe 2026
Updated: Sep 23
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 | Underbelly Cowgate
Only at the Edinburgh Fringe could you walk into a room to watch a romantic musical about a half-man, half-moth cryptid and emerge thinking:
“You know what? That actually worked.”
Mothman: A Romance Musical is exactly the sort of gloriously stupid, completely committed nonsense that makes the Fringe so much fun.
Written by Alex Franklin and Nikola McMurtrie, who perform alongside Alex Prescot and Hudson Hughes, the story begins with a Second World War American super-soldier experiment going slightly wrong when a moth finds its way into the machine.
Obviously, this creates Mothman.
Fast-forward and three friends head into the woods of West Virginia searching for the legendary creature, beginning an increasingly ridiculous adventure involving romance, strange characters, questionable accents and more plot twists than anyone could reasonably expect to fit into an hour.
The whole thing has a wonderfully homemade feel.
There are deliberately cheap-looking props, quick costume changes, projections and four performers somehow creating what feels like an entire population of absolute lunatics.
Rather than being limited by its shoestring Fringe production, the show makes it part of the joke.
And then there are the songs.
For something built around such a ridiculous premise, they're far better than they have any right to be. I'm Just Kevin is particularly inspired, while Monster in the Dark could genuinely pass for a song from a much bigger musical.
The cast completely commit to the madness, with Nikola McMurtrie's wonderfully awkward Mothman somehow becoming genuinely endearing.
That's perhaps the biggest surprise.
Underneath all the chaos, Mothman actually has heart. Somehow, amongst murderous clowns, bizarre characters and a mutant moth-person, you find yourself genuinely invested in its wonderfully peculiar love story.
It's silly, camp, chaotic and proudly rough around the edges.
In other words...
it's absolutely bloody Fringe.
One of those shows where attempting to explain it afterwards only makes you sound increasingly unhinged.
Just go with it.
★★★★★ – 5/5
