Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Underbelly Cowgate

Unexpected Item In The Bagging Area continues at Underbelly Cowgate – Belly Button, Edinburgh until 25 August 2019.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

If there was a prize for most promising title, this show would be right up there. In a nonsense-packed hour from the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society, this can probably be best described as a ‘summer panto’ – throw in a bit of cross-dressing and an audience sing-a-long and it would work even better.

Set in a supermarket, an assortment of easily identified characters try to manage running the store in the midst of an attempt at corporate sabotage.

There are some great vocal performances and some good movers, but it is the music and the band that are the class act here.  Good original tunes that are played and arranged beautifully – how much more that talent can achieve will be something to watch out for. Writing credits are shared by Jamie Bisping and Amaya Holman and if they attempt work with a bit more meat on the bone, something special could happen.

Fiona Orr