People don’t normally go to comedy shows for political enlightenment. They want escapism — to be, literally, diverted. But these are not normal times, and several noteworthy comedy acts at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe are engaging effectively with political themes.
The challenge is to not come across as a fanatic — or worse, a bore. Comics are gracefully avoiding these pitfalls by foregrounding personal narratives over polemic, and letting the audience join the dots.
It’s been a month since President Trump threatened to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her U.S. citizenship, but he features only fleetingly in her new show, “Common Knowledge.” The first reference to “the orange menace” occurs roughly 30 minutes into this hourlong monologue, which unpacks O’Donnell’s decision to emigrate from New York to Dublin for the sake of her autistic and nonbinary child, Clay.
There are some fun fish-out-of-water antics as O’Donnell acclimatizes to Irish social mores. She misinterprets her pharmacist’s friendliness as romantic interest, and asks her out. (The pharmacist is straight, and married.) The show ends on an uplifting note as O’Donnell recalls going on an Irish talk show to discuss autism and coming home to find an autistic local boy on her doorstep, asking to be friends.
This is cozy, life-affirming stuff; against a backdrop of simmering culture wars, O’Donnell’s compassionate embrace of difference feels implicitly political.
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