Gavin Creel, Tony-winning Broadway vet and University of Michigan alum, dies at 48

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

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

Creel won the Tony for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical in 2017 for his performance as 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 in Findlay, Ohio, on April 18, 1976, Creel showed a very early aptitude for entertaining, putting on performances in the family living room with his two older sisters. In his teens, he would step into show choir and stage musical roles. After high school, he attended the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater in 1998.

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

He said his Midwestern upbringing was a major positive influence, and told the Toledo Blade, “I think the main reason I’m successful is because I’m kind, I’m easy to work with and I’m a team player. And that’s not ‘cause I’m a great person, it’s because of the values I learned being from Ohio and having good parents who instilled in me that ‘you’re a part of something, you’re not the something.’”

However, he also spoke about the difficulty of growing up gay in a community that held no space for him.

“I am constantly trying to sooth that little wounded dude inside me to say, ‘You’re okay, even if somebody has made you feel shame,’ he told Bobby Steggert this year on Steggert’s podcast, “The Quiet Part Out Loud.”

He said during the podcast that he remained scarred from “growing up super-Christian and being in the Methodist Church my entire life,” and that he was “still to this day trying to deprogram the pain that the church caused me, and having such an aversion to organized religion and the ways it creeps into laws and schools.”

In his adult life, he became a gay rights advocate and co-founded Broadway Impact, an organization that supported same-sex marriage when it was still illegal in much of the U.S.

Creel’s instantly likable stage persona and celebrated tenor won him plentiful and consistent work in theater. He spent two decades treading the boards on Broadway in mostly starring roles and was also a favorite in London’s West End, where he performed in numerous productions and won an Olivier Award for his work as a sanctimonious missionary in “The Book of Mormon” – a performance no doubt influenced by his church-based youth.

“The Tony really felt like a hug from the community I’ve been in for 20 years,” he said to the San Francisco Chronicle. “That feels good. I can literally do nothing else in my life and I’m still a Tony winner. I will never not 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 dbeddingfield@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Gavin Creel, Tony-winning Broadway vet and University of Michigan alum, dies at 48