Flesh – Ed Fringe 2026

Flesh: Fleming Theatre at theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

17th August 2026

★★

From Softplanet Productions Flesh is now on its third Fringe run. Billed as a fast, funny and furious contemporary musical resurrecting the grisly tale of Burke and Hare and their relationship with the Edinburgh medical establishment.

This is quite a slow moving show – more of a play with songs than a full blown musical. The songs are very folk inspired despite it being billed as a folk/rock musical. To be honest, it may have worked better if it had been a straight play as the songs didn’t add anything to the show, except allowing the ensemble members to be onstage for longer than the 2 minutes before Burke and Hare killed them.

Burke and Hare are always going to be an interesting subject and draw in viewers. Everyone likes dark history and of course this particular grisly story happened right here. However, for this to work it either needs to be really dark or be a comedy. This production is neither. It tries to be funny at times with some one liners added in but they don’t land with the audience. Likewise it isn’t particularly dramatic or dark, even given the subject.

It is a shame as the story itself is intriguing but ultimately this show falls flat and ends up being slow and dare I say it, boring. Still, that’s the beauty of the Fringe. It allows people a stage to perform on and audiences to see a range of shows and make their up own minds.

For more information and tickets click here.

AD – PR invite in exchange for a honest review.