one4review | On 04, Sep 2026

For those not up on their Appalachian cryptids, Mothman is a seldom seen creature whose odd, winged appearance and glowing red eyes are often thought to prophesize doom. There’s a lot more to say about it but, fortunately, this Mothman show isn’t really about any of that. In fact, this Mothman doesn’t bring doom, instead he wants to bring people together.

With possibly one of the most visually arresting stage designs of any show I’ve yet seen, The Mothman Cometh takes place almost entirely in darkness, with the only light coming from the glowing red eyes of the performer on stage. I was honestly blown away by how effective and eerie this – initially simple seeming – concept was. The eyes bounce and dance as Mothman speaks and moves. When he turns to the wall he’s briefly silhouetted and all you can see is a slim black shape against the darkness. But while you cannot see Mothman you soon realise that he can see you. It’s immediately thrilling and odd and all sorts of spooky. However, this tone doesn’t really reflect the show and I can’t help wondering if that impacts on its effectiveness at the end.

Mothman (performed by Richie Schiraldi) starts the show saying that he is a creature fuelled by darkness though its not entirely clear what this means. Schiraldi’s Mothman is something of a camp supervillain in the 60s Batman mould – not evil as such, but seemingly having some kind of dastardly plan going on, though he never really gets around to revealing what those are, other than establishing that the audience members present are his “minions”. The rather loose structure of the show is that Mothman is being pursued by an interdimensional…thing called “the void” which consumes everything and it is only by leading his minions to complete a series of challenges and rituals that he will be able to defeat it. What this boils down to is an awful lot of audience participation in a show that, in its essence, is a clown show minus the visual part of physical theatre. There are, however, plenty of music breaks as Mothman is seemingly taken over by radio signals (or something? It’s never explained) and bursts into various well-known songs at points, which the audience are more than happy to sign along with.

Thematically the show is about overcoming fears. It starts with Mothman asking audience members to shout out their fears and interrogating them as to their answers. Over the show this leads to audience members being asked to chat with strangers, dance on stage and otherwise use the intimacy and anonymity of the cover of darkness to come together and move forwards into the light. And that’s pretty commendable as a goal and I’m sure for some people it worked well but I was left feeling it hadn’t quite hit the mark.

I think what didn’t click for me is Schiraldi’s style of audience participation. It’s one I’m beginning to associate with certain clown performers, predominantly from the US, where they keep digging after the initial question/moment of interaction like a toddler asking “why?” until the poor mark who’s being asked is forced to just give up and say “I don’t know”. It seems odd to me that while stand-ups and improv troupes are happy to shoulder the burden of making the interactions funny, some performers turn up seemingly hoping that the audience will do the work for them. Schiraldi’s Mothman is more than likeable enough, and the crowd were clearly behind him but he didn’t seem to have anything prepared to weave the straw the audience gave him into gold, and the interactions went from funny to awkward a little too often. And I should mention that on the night I went the crowd was seemingly full of American theatre-kids and acts from around the festival who were more than happy to throw back what Schiraldi threw at them but they still ended up getting overwhelmed by the pressure to perform he put on them at points.

Overall, this is a show for a very specific audience, who show up ready to play, are generous with laughs, and don’t mind a little obfuscation in terms of what’s happening (Mothman also would occasionally shut down into a sort of “sleep mode” which was never explained or resolved either). Ironically, I would say that probably this isn’t really a show for people who are interested in Mothman lore, which I gathered from a couple sitting behind me during the making friends section, was the only reason some people came to the show. But that said, the design of this show is not just good but phenomenal, so while it wasn’t necessarily for me, it was certainly worth the experience.