Rosie O’Donnell’s Solo Show “Common Knowledge” Explores Family, Identity, and Political Echoes

Last night, Rosie O’Donnell, who debuted her new Off Broadway solo show Common Knowledge, and former President Donald Trump, who made his first appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner as president, each presented their perspectives on a range of topics, including one another.

In short, O’Donnell’s performance far outperformed Trump’s.

Hours before Trump delivered what many critics described as a poorly received, deceitful, and humorless address at the Washington, D.C., dinner, O’Donnell seized the opportunity to employ what the president might label “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” delivering a frank and, unsurprisingly, witty recounting of her recent relocation to Ireland and the personal upheavals it entailed.

While Trump figures as a small yet intriguing element within Common Knowledge, the bulk of the autobiographical performance—O’Donnell states upfront that the material is entirely true—focuses on her family, particularly her late mother and her youngest adopted daughter, who is both autistic and nonbinary. These aspects have presented both challenges and joys to the comedian.

The opening segment begins with a multimedia montage that includes a clip from a 2006 The View episode in which O’Donnell, sweeping her hair aside, delivered a sharp imitation of Trump—then making headlines for advising a Miss USA contestant. She asked, “He’s the moral authority?” before proceeding to reference his failed marriages and bankruptcies.

*The View* episode marked the beginning of a 20‑year feud that deeply affected O’Donnell and left a lasting imprint on Trump’s psyche. After she relocated to Ireland in January 2025—an move she says was partly motivated by Trump’s re‑election—Trump posted on Truth Social, “Because Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am seriously considering revoking her citizenship. She is a threat to humanity and should remain in Ireland, if they’ll have her.”

Although the Truth Social message was posted a year earlier, Trump reignited the grievance at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, placing O’Donnell alongside other figures he blames, including late‑night hosts, political opponents, and CNN journalists. He sarcastically claimed she “really wanted to be here to honor me,” that she “loves me very much,” and that she was “desperate” to return to the United States to pay tribute to him, but “nobody wanted her to come back.” He further labeled her a “sick young woman” and later a “sick older woman.”

The joke fell flat, met with silence from the dinner audience. In contrast, O’Donnell’s performance, delivered just hours earlier on her Off Broadway stage and featuring the moniker “Mango Mussolini,” conveyed her reaction to Trump’s citizenship threat.

“I initially thought it was a joke,” she told reporters upon learning of the post. Upon realizing it was genuine, O’Donnell simply informed the press that the president cannot legally revoke her citizenship.

The response to her retort was met with enthusiastic applause, providing a cathartic moment in a show that offers a nuanced exploration of Trump’s influence on O’Donnell’s life and mental health. Deeply depressed during and after the pandemic isolation, worried about her autistic daughter, using cannabis heavily, and enduring a prolonged career hiatus, O’Donnell, with only one of her five children still at home, relocated from New York City to Los Angeles, where she revived her interest in arts and crafts as a coping mechanism.

The crafts were not an escape from her preoccupation with Trump; instead, she began posting hand‑drawn, sharply critical portraits of Trump on social media, prompting her publicist to call in concern. When a friend asked how many paintings she had created, O’Donnell replied, “211.”

hey Donald – you’re rattled again?
20 years later and I still live rent‑free in that collapsing brain of yours
you call me a threat to humanity – but I’m everything you fear:
a loud woman
a queer woman
a mother sho tells the truth
you are everything that is wrong with
america – and I’m everything you hate
about what’s still right with it
you want to revoked my citizenship?
go ahead and try
king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan
i’m not yours to silence
I never was

While O’Donnell and Trump remain mentally and emotionally entangled after decades of conflict, the comedian does not devote much stage time to the feud in her new solo show, beyond the opening montage, and she offers little focus on her film or television career. Readers seeking insider details about The View will not find them here.

(Side note: O’Donnell also mentions her upcoming August appearance as guest host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where she plans to debut a song—previewed in Common Knowledge—featuring new, Trump‑inspired lyrics set to the *Wizard of Oz*’s “If I Only Had a Brain.” A sample line reads, ‘All he does is cause us drama, ’cause he wants to be Obama, ’cause he doesn’t have a brain.’ She notes that Kimmel’s producers have told her that song parodies are difficult to clear for broadcast, but adds that, being live, ‘so what the fuck.’)

What Common Knowledge concentrates on are the turbulent and emotional episodes of O’Donnell’s family life, both her original family and the one she has built (though she is selective—she does not mention daughter Chelsea’s legal issues involving drugs). The most powerful moments in the performance recount a 1973 incident when, at age ten, she was summoned home from a neighbor’s house and informed by her father that her mother had died. Though she did not fully comprehend the gravity at the time, she remembers that her five‑year‑old brother, clinging to her leg, declared she would now have to become the mother.

The Irish interlude is intriguing, yet the performance’s most moving segment is O’Donnell’s candid, affectionate portrayal of her youngest adopted daughter, Dakota, born in 2013. At ten months, Dakota could utter complete sentences, as evidenced by video footage; by two years she was quoting entire scenes from Frozen and later received diagnoses of autism, hyperlexia—an unusually expansive vocabulary—and echolalia, the tendency to repeat words and lengthy phrases verbatim, often imitating others’ accents.

O’Donnell recounts her own initial reactions to her daughter’s diagnoses: concern, of course, but also a certain appreciation for the girl’s wit, an astonishing knack for new knowledge—she answers Jeopardy questions about the Mariana Trench with unsettling quickness—and truth‑telling, even if the latter takes some getting used to. When a classmate disliked by the daughter—who announced she wants to be called Clay because she identifies as an artist—is mistakenly invited to her birthday party, the birthday girl bluntly informs him that he is not welcome and should go home.

O’Donnell, a self‑described “OG lesbian bitch,” is initially flummoxed by the nonbinary concept—she willingly adopts the daughter’s preferred they/them pronouns but occasionally slips, using “she” several times. When Clay asks how she knew she was a lesbian, and O’Donnell replies that she discovered it at age ten, the daughter follows up by asking how her grade‑school classmates reacted to the news. O’Donnell’s stunned silence in the face of that impossible‑to‑grasp question speaks volumes.

If the 75‑minute solo show—the title derives from Clay’s insistence that her mental collection of facts is merely common knowledge—feels a bit underdeveloped (it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year), O’Donnell efficiently ties together family stories by ultimately circling back to her mother. The comedian sees her mother’s face everywhere in the women of Ireland and draws a crucial lesson: life, when all is said and done, is about perseverance.

Or, as O’Donnell says at the close of her charming show, after all the tribulations of life and Trump, “I’m still here.”

Title: Rosie O’Donnell: Common Knowledge
Venue: Off Broadway’s Daryl Roth Theatre
Written & Performed By: Rosie O’Donnell
Directed By: Gabriel Barre
Running Time: 1 hr 15 min (no intermission)

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