A month ago, Donald Trump branded comedian Rosie O’Donnell a “threat to humanity” and threatened to revoke her US citizenship. Judging by this fringe hour, he’d be welcome to it. Common Knowledge is a hymn of praise to O’Donnell’s new home, Ireland, where she and her child Clay moved at the time of Trump’s inauguration. Clay, who is non-binary, is the other focus of the show, and of their mum’s rapturous affections, in a set that’s more a love letter to these two presences in the 63-year-old’s life than it is let-it-rip comedy.
The show is bookended by reflections on O’Donnell’s mother, whose death when our host was 10 years old is recounted in a solemn opening. Now a parent to five adopted children, motherhood is clearly a major concern of the comedian, and here we get the whole story, with a slide show, of how Clay arrived in her life. Autistic, prodigiously intelligent, fearlessly truth-telling, this is a child who dismays and instructs their mother in equal measure. That cycle supplies the show’s rhythm: we get the funny story about Clay’s behaviour, then the earnest lesson O’Donnell has derived from it.
That, combined with a sonorous and sentimental quality to the storytelling, can make Common Knowledge more sermon than standup. At points, it’s a rallying call for autism awareness. Elsewhere, it plays like a heartfelt thank you to Ireland (which she keeps referring to as “here”) for saving the New Yorker from depression and the disintegrating US, with O’Donnell starry-eyed at how safe, cheap and progressive her perfect new homeland seems to be. But the earnestness is regularly punctured with self-mocking comedy, as with the tale of Rosie and her then teenage son’s joint visit to her therapist; or the story of her mistaking the friendliness of her new Irish pharmacist for flirtation, with humiliating consequences.
There’s no standup cut and thrust to this: O’Donnell cleaves tightly to her script and stately delivery. But the tale she’s telling means a lot to her and she tells it authoritatively, and with enough irony, self-reflection and (Trump, take note) humanity – to make it engaging for the rest of us.
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At Orchard at the Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh, until 10 August
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