An actress doesn't have to have a lot of stage (or screen) time to make an indelible impression; just ask Margaret Hamilton ("The Wizard of Oz"), Judi Dench ("Shakespeare in Love"), Adriane Lenox or Viola Davis (Doubt). Or you can ask Kerry O'Malley, who's playing the small but richly rewarding role of Abigail Adams in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of the great Sherman Edwards-Peter Stone musical,1776.
"Because of the way the way the show is constructed," says O'Malley, "with all of those men, the appearance of a woman in both instances -- Abigail and Martha Jefferson -- is like a window opening up for the audience.. We almost don't have to do anything besides show up!" But, O'Malley hastens to add, "Abigail's function in the show is really important because we see someone who loves John, someone who can look past all his foibles and obnoxiousness. She knows his heart and knows what he's trying to achieve. The humor he has with her, their repartée, is necessary to warm him up as a character. And towards the end of the show, when he gets frightened and down, she's there to remind him of what he has to do."
O'Malley is closely familiar with the voluminous epistolary correspondence between the Adamses, from which certain phrases are quoted verbatim in the musical's book and lyrics. "'Yours, yours, yours,' 'My dearest friend,' 'I live like a nun in a cloister' -- those are all direct quotes from the letters," she says. "I grew up in New England, and I was a history major in college, so I first read the letters long before I did the show. John and Abigail were apart for so long, but you really get a strong sense of their relationship in what they wrote to each other."
Most recently seen on Broadway in White Christmas, O'Malley is part of an impressive 1776 company that also includes Don Stephenson as John Adams, Conrad John Schuck as Benjamin Franklin, Robert Cuccioli as John Dickinson, James Barbour as Edward Rutledge, and Lauren Kennedy as Martha Jefferson. She's very happy to have been cast as Abigail, a plum role that was so memorably played by Virginia Vestoff in the original Broadway production and the film version of 1776 and, in another incarnation, by Laura Linney in the 2008 miniseries "John Adams," based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by David McCullough.
"The book and the series are both wonderful," O'Malley enthuses. "They make it clear how extraordinary John and Abigail were, the hardships they went through together. I hope the audiences for our show, students in particular, will want to learn more about these people. There's so much literature out there that's incredibly entertaining to read."
