New York Post
Tony-winning Broadway star Gavin Creel dead at 48
By Johnny Oleksinski
Sept 30, 2024
At Broadway’s Easter Bonnet Competition
Gavin Creel, the Tony Award-winning star of Broadway musicals such as “Hello, Dolly!” and “Hair,” died Monday in Manhattan, his partner confirmed.
He was 48.
The young actor’s cause of death was metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma, an aggressive form of cancer that he was diagnosed with in July.
Creel kept acting until December when he performed his final role in the experimental musical “Walk On Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice” at MCC Theater.
Born in Findlay, Ohio, on April 18, 1976, Creel got his big break on Broadway in 2002, when he played Jimmy in Jeanine Tesori’s musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” opposite Sutton Foster at the Marquis Theater.
During previews of “Millie,” Creel blew his knee out in the speakeasy scene, and was sidelined. Longing to be back on the boards, he struggled to watch his understudy act with Foster every night.
“I felt like a jealous ex-boyfriend,” he told The Post of his debut. “I was thinking, ‘I don’t want you up there with her.’ It was like I’d fallen in love with her.”
But he recovered and returned to that stage, where the tenor sang the song “What Do I Need With Love?,” and earned himself his first Tony nomination.
Creel had a particular knack for musical comedy, he went on to star in “La Cage aux Folles,” “The Book of Mormon,” “She Loves Me,” “Waitress,” “Hello, Dolly!” and most recently “Into the Woods.”
Creel finally won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 2017, for his performance as Cornelius Hackl in “Hello, Dolly!” starring Bette Midler.
