The Jolly Fisherman – Buttercup, Underbelly, George Square

There is a certain irony in spending ten minutes wandering up and down George Square Gardens trying to find a play which turns out to be largely about our need to find a place to belong.

The Jolly Fisherman isn’t actually inside the Gardens at all. Eventually I discover it outside, beside the box office, housed in what looks remarkably like a Portakabin. Perhaps accidentally, it is the perfect introduction to John Dinneen’s thoughtful new play about place, identity and what happens when the buildings we invest with meaning cease to be ours.

At its centre are Alan and Amir, childhood friends growing up in a changing East London. The Jolly Fisherman pub becomes the physical point around which their lives, and eventually their differing ideas about belonging, revolve.

What fascinated me most is the distinction Dinneen quietly establishes between them.

Amir uses the back room of the pub to pray. He doesn’t require a mosque to practise his faith. He can carry his religion, identity and soul into an ordinary room and, for those few moments, make that place sacred.

Alan’s relationship with place is almost the reverse. For him, the bricks and mortar of the Jolly Fisherman acquire an importance which is itself almost religious. The building contains memory, family and community. Lose the building and, somehow, something of himself disappears with it.

It is an intelligent exploration of what architects might call genius loci, the spirit of place. Is that spirit contained within bricks, mortar and geography, or is it created by the people who gather there?

The play never needs to shout the question.

There are some beautifully observed details. A darts scoreboard becomes a simple device for marking the passing years, while darts itself provides an unexpectedly lovely lesson in mental arithmetic. No calculator here. The calculations happen in your head, part of the inherited rules of Alan, his father and his father’s generation.

And when the pub eventually moves, the people move with it. They gather again and create another place. Perhaps the building was never quite as important as Alan imagined.

The performances are excellent, intimate and entirely believable, allowing Dinneen’s larger ideas about religion, community, immigration and English identity to emerge through friendship rather than political argument.

This isn’t the biggest or most spectacular production at the Fringe. It doesn’t need to be.

The Jolly Fisherman understands something much more interesting: buildings can hold memories, but people make places.

Even if, occasionally, you have considerable difficulty finding them.

Playing until August 31st 2026,https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/2026JOLLYFI

Reviewer: Greg Holstead

Reviewed: 10th August 2026

North West End UK / Theatre Muse UK Rating:

Running time – 1hr