Gavin Creel, Tony-Winning Musical Theater Actor, Dies at 48
Gavin Creel, a sly and charming musical theater actor who won a Tony Award as a wide-eyed adventure seeker in “Hello, Dolly!” and an Olivier Award as a preening missionary in “The Book of Mormon,” died on Monday at his home in Manhattan.
He was 48. His death was confirmed by his partner, Alex Temple Ward, via a publicist, Matt Polk. The cause was metastatic melanotic peripheral nerve sheath sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, which Mr.
Creel learned he had in July. Mr. Creel was a well-liked member of the New York theater community whose death comes as a shock, given his age; he had been performing on Broadway for two decades, mostly in starring roles, and just last winter, his physical and vocal agility, as well as his charisma and curiosity, were on display in a memoiristic show he wrote and performed Off Broadway called “Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice,” about learning to love the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A superior singer with a sunny tenor, Mr. Creel made his Broadway debut and received his first Tony nomination in 2002 as the suave salesman Jimmy Smith in the original production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” starring opposite Sutton Foster, who played the title character, a spunky social climber named Millie Dillmount.
