My friend David Jay alerted me to the death of a favorite Broadway actor, Gavin Creel. He died today at the much too young age of 48. He had a rare kind of cancer and had been treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
He was an extraordinary performer, very charismatic, with an appealing mixture of showbiz know-how and apparent sincerity, and he had a beautiful, expressive voice. I could see him doing important work into his 70s or 80s. It's a great loss to the theatre community that he died this young.
I've been a fan of Creel's since 2002, when I saw him in his Broadway debut role, Jimmy in *Thoroughly Modern Millie.* Here's an overview of what I've seen him in:
2002: *Millie*
2003: *Bounce*
2004: *La Cage aux Folles*
2009: *Hair*
2016: *She Loves Me*
2017 and 2018: *Hello, Dolly!* (three times)
He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for Hello, Dolly! He was handed the award by Sutton Foster, who had played his leading lady and love interest in Millie all those years before.
I saw Creel in a one-man sort of club act at the 92nd Street Y in 2019. I knew going into the show that we have the same birthday but was shocked to hear we had an even more spooky connection. He told the story about his first trip to New York - - he and a friend from Michigan slept on a friend's floor, saw a few shows, took it all in. He made this trip Thanksgiving weekend 1994. My first trip to New York was the weekend BEFORE, exactly a week before his, the middle of November in 1994.
Here's a compilation of his best moments in Hello, Dolly!
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