Edinburgh Fringe 2026
The Jolly Fisherman
Kick It Anywhere
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Underbelly George Square Buttercup
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
A warm, funny and quietly affecting exploration of friendship, belonging and the unwritten rules of the local pub. Alex Hill and Jonny Khan skilfully chart a decade of change, both in their characters and the world around them. The Jolly Fisherman finds something deeply human at the bottom of the pint glass.
Review
The Jolly Fisherman is playing in Underbelly’s Buttercup venue throughout the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2026.
The set is simple. Pub vibes, a dartboard and four stools. As the pre-show indie of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Valerie’ dies away, actor Alex Hill as Alan begins to weave a tale of youthful misadventure at his local pub, The Jolly Fisherman. People of a certain age in the UK will know exactly the kind of pub. A local pub for local people. The kind of place where it feels like there are levels of membership and certain unwritten hierarchy of acceptance before you’re allowed to crack any jokes or throw a joke or two around – the aim, if you really want to belong, is to become a ‘local’. Sure, you can nip in for a quick drink and unless you’re clearly not an ‘other’, you’ll be fine. However, to really understand the local area and the people in it, you need to be ‘in the club’ that has become part of the furniture. This is handy because, during this two-hander, there are times when the actors project various characters straight onto an empty chair for us to imagine. It’s also this club that Alan finds himself firmly in, by virtue of his father being one of the locals.
At age 14 when the play begins, Alan is in his formative years, where friendships become the thing that could defines the ones to come, so it’s interesting when Alan, who is naturally curious and gregarious, bumps into a young man who is clearly not from his social circle or cultural comfort zone. Enter Amir (Jonny Khan), a gentle and mature counterpoint to Alan’s boisterous and testosterone-fuelled energy. We watch the relationship grow and unfold between the two young men as it develops over a number of years, from 2015 all the way through to 2025.
What lies at the heart of The Jolly Fisherman is a vivid painting of what could now be considered old England, which is to say an England where the local pub was a place of social worship and connection for the men and women of the area. It charts the decline of traditional pubs over the last decade and explores how people have been forced out of the comfortable, safe zones they once felt themselves masters of and into new places with other displaced pubgoers, having to form new relationships and like a pride of lions that have wandered into another territory, they are working out how to make it work without losing face and status.
Meanwhile, a concurrent story emerges through Amir who, as a Muslim and non-drinker, has nevertheless managed to find something of a place within this predominantly white East London pub. Due to his attachment to Alan, he’s in the club but his membership is under constant review – never quite liked, never quite trusted. His relationship with Alan becomes strained as more and more plot points emerge to drive a wedge between them. We get a full decade in the lives of two young men separated by heritage and skin colour, yet who seem determined to remain best mates.
Hill and Khan do an excellent job of bringing the numerous larger-than-life supporting characters vividly to life. Clear shifts in vocal tone and energy ensure that we always know when we are hearing dialogue from someone other than the two main characters. Though little is done physically to represent them, it seems to matter little within the scope of a piece presented largely through direct address storytelling.
There are shades of Death of England in its tone, setting and theatrical form, which is very much intended as a compliment. Just as that production leaves a strong imprint of those pockets life within London that consider themselves bastions of English patriotism, so too does this leave you musing on the complexities and pressures placed upon those people when they are brave enough to step out of their lane and connect with someone who is not like them. The Jolly Fisherman is a warm, sharply observed and quietly affecting piece of theatre that finds something deeply human at the bottom of the pint glass.
