Bringing up a baby and an autobiographical show
For the father of a nearly 3-month-old, Rory O’Malley sounds remarkably coherent and non-sleep-deprived. The Tony-nominated actor, who has starred on Broadway in “The Book of Mormon” and “Hamilton,” is on the phone from his home in Los Angeles to talk about his new autobiographical cabaret show, “Pub Crawl.”
He had booked the show’s two dates at Feinstein’s at the Nikko — Friday, Feb. 22, and Saturday, Feb. 23 — before he knew that he and his husband of four years, Gerold Schroeder, were going to be parents of a newborn.
“We’ve been involved in the adoption process for a couple
Rory O’Malley, who played King George III in the previous S.F. production of “Hamilton,” now has his own cabaret show.
of years,” the 38-year-old O’Malley says, “and after a couple disappointments and close calls, we were totally surprised when we got the call in November.”
O’Malley and Schroeder welcomed Jimmy O’Malley into their lives right around Thanksgiving last year, and life as they knew it has shifted. “Pub Crawl” marks O’Malley’s first time onstage since becoming a dad, and he says the show is coming at a perfect time.
“I’m telling a very personal story,” he says. “It’s about growing up with a single mom in Cleveland and being surrounded by friends and family in Irish bars. I learned everything I know about sto-
rytelling from Irish music, so I’m paying tribute to my origins in that culture.”
When it comes to O’Malley’s actual origins — his mother found herself pregnant after a one-night fling with an Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day — he calls himself “the biggest Irish cliche you can get.” His childhood in Cleveland is filled with memories of Irish bars, his mom, her six siblings, all their kids and the crew O’Malley calls “the weekend warriors,” the blue-collar folks who headed to the pub every weekend. “We didn’t think it ever got any better than that,” he says.
Singing songs by the likes of U2, the Pogues, Van Morrison, the Clancy Brothers and the Wolf Tones, O’Malley says his show honors his mother and the crowd of family and friends who helped raise him, including one of his mom’s friends in particular, a good Irish-Catholic man who worked as a fireman, owned a pub and was very protective of O’Malley and his mom. He also happened to be a closeted gay man.
“Sadly, he contracted AIDS and passed away in 1990, but before he died, he asked my mom to marry him and to adopt me as his son so we could receive his fireman’s pension,” O’Malley says. “He was the reason I was able to go to private high school with the best drama program in the city. He’s the reason I got to go to Carnegie Mellon. The legacy he gave to my family now comes full circle with me adopting a son.”
There’s another part of the story involving a trip to the West Coast of Ireland when O’Malley was 19 and O’Malley’s mom warning him he might bump into his biological father. “I said, ‘Mom, it’s a country, not the grocery store.’ But she was right,” O’Malley says. “I ended up meeting him, and that story of what it means to be a father is something I need to explore right now.”
“Pub Crawl” marks O’Malley’s first time performing in San Francisco since “Hamilton” nearly two years ago, and he says there was a distinct difference between doing the show here and on Broadway.
“Performing for audiences in San Francisco is one of the most beautiful experiences of my life onstage,” he says. “In New York, it was like they were coming to a museum to pay tribute to a great piece of work. In San Francisco, it was like the big circus had landed in the backyard. People did not hold back for one moment. It was just a party. I couldn’t believe it was topping the feeling of being on Broadway. Such a total joy.”
Even with all his professional achievements (including an upcoming summer Lifetime series called “American Princess”), O’Malley says his greatest goal beyond anything in show business has been fatherhood.
“When Gerold and I met 10 years ago in New York, we were probably the only 20something gays in Manhattan with the same goal: to be dads,” O’Malley says. “That’s why we fell in love. We come from similar Irish-Catholic, Midwestern backgrounds. Having a family was everything to us. It was not easy — we had to get laws changed to even get married — and the adoption process, with the waiting and the rejection, sometimes felt like what you deal with in show business. But it’s really all about being able to share my life with my husband and now my son.”