We pay tribute to Gavin Creel, who has died aged 48

‘Gavin would love to see you after the show.’ It was late 2023, just before New Year’s, and I was at the MCC Theatre Off Broadway to see Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice. This was a show – a spiritual exploration in song, really – composed by, and starring, Tony winner Gavin Creel. His publicist advised me to hang around the auditorium following the bows, and so I did, proffering congratulations on a daring achievement, fully realised – and little knowing I would never see Gavin again. 

The news of his death on 30 September, aged 48, from a rare form of cancer diagnosed only in July seems in every way wrong. Gavin exuded a life force as seen in his devotion to his work but also in his societal engagement as a proud LGBT activist who was the most charming crusader possible.

How lucky were those of us to have shared in that force field of joy and enthusiasm. He visited my classes three times over the years, during his various West End engagements in Mary Poppins, Hair, The Book of Mormon (for which he won an Olivier), and Waitress – that last title bringing him to class just a week before Covid shut down London theatreland (and before he himself contracted Covid). Sometimes, he brought along Wally, his beloved pooch (and sidekick) who – another sadness – predeceased him. 

Creel with Sara Bareilles in 'Waitress' at the Adelphi Theatre (Credit: Matt Crockett for Dewynters)

Shocked by his passing, a student wrote me about the lasting impact left by Gavin: ‘I will always remember when he came into our class, Matt. And he was talking about listening to the little voice that keeps you up at night that’s telling you to be your true self.’ Those words helped a then-closeted undergraduate accept that he was gay.

In fact, Gavin loved the classroom setting. In his exuberant Tony acceptance speech in 2017 for Hello, Dolly!, in which he was the most exuberant Cornelius possible, he thanked the teachers from his time at the University of Michigan who had left their mark.

He was born in Ohio, one of three children in a religious household that, one senses, foregrounded compassion; I can speak firsthand to the kindness of his parents, who were there for one of the visits he made to my London students. Their delight in their son was evident, as was their love.

His career hit giddy heights from the off. He made his Broadway debut in 2002 in Thoroughly Modern Millie opposite another then-neophyte, Sutton Foster, receiving a Tony nomination for his performance as Jimmy Smith.

(Left to right) Beanie Feldstein, Taylor Trensch, Kate Baldwin and Gavin Creel in 'Hello, Dolly!' (Credit: Julieta Cervantes)

I saw every one of his Broadway ventures that followed. Ironically given his own self-assertion as a gay man, he followed up Millie with the part of gay couple Georges and Albin’s straight son in the 2004 revival of La Cage aux Folles, and earned a second Tony nod as the irrepressible Claude in the revival of Hair that transferred to London’s Gielgud Theatre in 2010 (Caissie Levy was a co-star). That show’s final sequence, Claude’s abundant locks shorn as he becomes part of the ‘dying nation’ referenced in the score, remains an overwhelmingly moving memory.

By contrast, he could also be all wide-eyed glee, whether questing for adventure as the clarion-voiced missionary in The Book of Mormon, which brought him an Olivier, or for the Manhattan society that was catnip to his Yonkers sales clerk in Hello, Dolly! Devilishly good-looking, Gavin communicated libido writ large as the womanising Kodaly in the 2016 Broadway revival of She Loves Me and as the prancing, vainglorious prince just two years ago in Into the Woods.

His duet with Joshua Henry on ‘Agony’ from that Sondheim musical is a thing of wonder, and agony sums up the feeling coursing through the theatre community just now. Many give lives over to their art; very few do so with such heart.

Gavin Creel: born 18 April 1976; died 30 September 2024

His family requests that gifts in Gavin’s memory be made to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids.

Joshua Henry with Gavin Creel in 'Into the Woods' (credit: Matthew-Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade)