Gavin Creel, Tony-winning Broadway veteran and UM graduate, dies at 48

Gavin Creel, a beloved Tony Award-winning musical theater actor who owed his success to the University of Michigan, died Monday at his home in New York City at age 48.

In July, Creel was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer known as metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma. The same illness took his life.

Creel won the 2017 Tony for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for his portrayal of Cornelius Hackl in the Bette Midler-led Broadway revival of Hello Dolly! He was nominated two other times: in 2002 for Thoroughly Modern Millie ,” where he starred opposite Sutton Foster, and as the leader of a hippie tribe in the 2009 revival of “Hair.”

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Born on April 18, 1976, in Findlay, Ohio, Creel showed an early flair for entertainment, giving performances with his two older sisters in the family living room. As a teenager, he performed in show choir and stage music. After high school, he attended the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance and graduated in 1998 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater.

“My education there as a young person changed my life forever,” Creel said from the stage, accepting his Tony. “My professors, my classmates — they gave me an appreciation for what it means to be an artist and what it means to be a part of this incredible community.”

He said his Midwestern upbringing had a huge positive influence, telling the Toledo Blade, “I think the main reason for my success is that I'm friendly, I'm easy to work with and I'm a team player.” And that's not because I'm a great person, but because of the values I learned in Ohio and good parents who taught me that you're a part of something, not the something.

However, he also spoke about the difficulty of growing up as a homosexual in a community that had no place for him.

“I'm constantly trying to calm the little hurt guy inside me by saying, 'You're okay even if someone shamed you,'” he told Bobby Steggert on Steggert's podcast “The Quiet Part Out Loud” this year.

During the podcast, he said that he was scarred by “growing up super Christian and being in the Methodist church my whole life” and that he “to this day tries to deprogram the pain that the church caused me, and that he is in so much pain.” a dislike of organized religion and the way it creeps into laws and schools.”

As an adult, he became active in gay rights and co-founded Broadway Impact, an organization that supported same-sex marriage when it was still illegal in much of the United States

Creel's immediately likeable stage personality and his celebrated tenor gave him numerous and consistent works in the theater. For two decades he appeared on Broadway, mostly in leading roles, and was also a favorite on London's West End, where he appeared in numerous productions and won an Olivier Award for his work as a hypocritical missionary in The Book of Mormon. His performance was undeniable influenced by his church youth.

“The Tony really felt like an embrace from the community I’ve lived in for 20 years,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “That feels good. I literally can't do anything else in my life and still be a Tony winner. I would never have done that.”

He is survived by his partner, Alex Temple Ward; his parents, Nancy Clemens Creel and James William Creel; and his sisters Heather Elise Creel and Allyson Jo Creel.

Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at [email protected].

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