It's been intriguing to read reviews of Rosie O'Donnell's belated Fringe debut Common Knowledge. They seem to have ranged from a disappointed two stars in The Times to an ecstatic five stars in Broadway World, while The Guardian sat on the fence with three stars. There is usually consensus among critics. Not many artists can trigger such a wide range of write-ups. But then not many artists are Rosie O'Donnell. Only one in fact.
I think that part of the reason she picked up the negative reviews is because the show is very much not a stand-up show. She starts with a totally serious introduction about the death of her mother when she was a child, before breaking the fourth wall and reassuring everyone that there will be jokes down the line. But then even when she embarks on the comedic element of the set it is very much a tightly scripted monologue when critics might have hoped for something looser. O'Donnell did, after all, cut her teeth on the American comedy circuit before becoming a talk show host and movie star.
Common Knowledge is really about two things. O'Donnell's relocation to Ireland after her much publicised disillusionment, shall we call it, with "Mango Mussolini” Donald Trump. Though to say disillusionment suggests that she was illusioned at some point, which probably couldn't be further from the truth. Things came to a head earlier this year when he suggested that she was a threat to humanity and said he was considering revoking her US citizenship.
The other strand to her show is essentially a love letter to her adopted daughter Clay (her love for Ireland comes into it too). A clearly brilliant child who knows their mind to the extent that when they announced their change of name from Dakota to Clay at the age of nine O'Donnell immediately went with it. The title comes from the fact that Clay absorbs facts like a sponge and when she discovers that her mother doesn't know these things she answers that they are "common knowledge".
It's an interesting show but not without its flaws. For reasons which are never quite clear O'Donnell keps referring to her new home in Dublin as "here". Surely somebody has pointed out that she is currently standing onstage in Edinburgh in Scotland. Then again, she also admits to getting Clay's pronouns wrong despite her best intentions. Maybe these are both signs of her sixtysomething brain.
Yet despite these wrinkles there is no denying that O'Donnell is a captivating speaker. In the end there are plenty of jokes here, as well as moving accounts of parenthood – O'Donell's father moved the family to Ireland at the height of the Troubles when her mum died so she certainly has an interesting domestic hinterland.
Maybe some critics were expecting something nore free flowing and more akin to an extended stand-up club set rather than an intensely personal story with a thick streak of sentimentality. I was too, but there's no denying that I was hooked on her every word. Well, almost every.
Until August 10. Buy tickets here.
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