Queerguru’s Robert Malcolm reviews Rosie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge @ Edinburgh Fringe

Credit Gene Read

Rosie O’Donnell:

Common Knowledge

Edinburgh Fringe Festival

 

Following her well-publicised feud with Donald Trump and her move to Ireland, Rosie O’Donnell arrived in Scotland to a much warmer welcome than met the President a few weeks ago.

We last saw her as The Virgin Mary, a lesbian nun who picks up Miranda in And Just Like That…

(I liked this character, and was hoping to see more of her, but just like that she was gone and AJLT with her.) It was a departure from her usual feisty rôles.

The title of her Edinburgh show refers to a saying regularly used by her youngest child after they present Rosie with a piece of obscure information, leading to a Google verification by Rosie. Eg.

“Cleopatra lived closer in time to the invention of the iPhone than to the building of the Pyramids. Common Knowledge!”

This is stand-up as story telling and although her subject matter is serious, Rosie O’Donnell is a hilarious narrator, her wit surprising you when you least expect it.

That subject is motherhood, and in particular, Rosie’s relationship with her fifth child, Dakota. At eleven years old, after her own mother’s death in 1973, Rosie’s best friend’s mother, Bernice, more or less adopted her. Mothers don’t have to be birth mothers.

Photographs and video clips are projected on a screen above the stage as we follow the extended O’Donnell family and the birth and adoption of baby Dakota, when Rosie is 50 and her four other kids have left home. We see and hear her first words at 10 months, witness her super intelligence, laugh at her precocious nature and are saddened by her diagnosis of autism.

At age 9 Dakota demands that her name is changed to Clay, much to the annoyance of Bernice, who decides to call her “the daughter formerly known as Dakota”. Clay responds by calling her “the old woman formerly known as grandma”

With the arrival of Covid in 2020, and her subsequent isolation, Rosie became very depressed and started drinking to excess. As an antidote, as soon as was allowed, she moved with Clay from New York to LA where the sunny, more relaxed lifestyle lifted her mood. She enrolled Clay in a school for kids with special needs and as part of her own therapy she painted 600 unflattering portraits of Donald Trump whom she calls “The Mango Mussolini.”

One day Clay sat her mother down to tell her something important. She is non-binary.

Rosie checked that Clay knew what that meant. Of course her answer was perfect. Common Knowledge. Clay asked when Rosie knew she was a Lesbian. At about the same age. There was no argument. Rosie began to use “they” as Clay’s pronoun but regularly forgot. Clay was unforgiving!

Fast forward to 2024. With the re-election of Donald Trump and his threats against her, Rosie secretly made plans to leave the US. The obvious country to migrate to was Ireland. In 2025 the move was complete.

In Dublin she was amazed to find a school for Clay which was geared to teach autistic children but which was open to all. The annual fees were a nominal €20 to cover any unexpected expenses. She compared this to the $78,000 she was spending on an exclusive school in LA.

Apart from the weather everything seems to be better in Ireland. Rosie has mellowed and regrets nothing about the move.

She expands on this with a sequence of hilarious anecdotes and observations on the Irish. In particular her encounters with angelic pharmacist Joan and down to earth lollipop lady Angela. Rosie’s ability to change characters and accents from New York to Dublin is phenomenal.

Her performance ends on a touching experience with a neighbour’s son following her appearance on Ireland’s The Late Late Show and a plea for acceptance and kindness in the equal treatment of all children.

Rosie O’Donnell holds her audience spellbound for an hour and takes us on a cathartic journey of sadness, madness and joy. You won’t find stand up comedy better than this.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Gilded Balloon at Appleton Tower, Orchard.

20.45 every night until 10th August

Queerguru Contributing Editor Robert Malcolm  is a trained architect and interior designer who relocated from London to his home town of Edinburgh in 2019. Under the pen name of Bobby Burns he had his first novel, a gay erotic thriller called Bone Island published by Homofactus Press in 2011.