The Tony Award-winning actor, who died on Monday at age 48, combined confidence and swagger with unflinching vulnerability.
In what would be his final stage show in New York, the actor Gavin Creel, who died on Monday at age 48, was searching for a sense of greater purpose in art.
"Where am I in this place?" he asked in the opening lyrics of "Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice," the musical he wrote about roaming the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a first-time visitor plagued by midlife questions. "Who am I meant to be? In this world, in this space, can I find me?" He dared himself to look for the answers inside.
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When I saw "Walk on Through" just before Christmas last year, at off-Broadway's MCC Theater, I was struck by Creel's tender and unflinching vulnerability. He wondered aloud whether he was smart enough to understand art, showing an endearing lack of pretension that I recognized as deeply Midwestern. (Creel was born in Findlay, Ohio, and studied musical theater at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I was raised). Inside the Met, Creel wound up pushing past his insecurities to locate in its halls reflections of his own restlessness, desire and heartbreak.
The pandemic interrupted Creel's trips to the museum and his work on the show, which also grappled with sexuality, faith and a dark period of loneliness he experienced. "Walk on Through" was the actor's theatrical songwriting debut, and he managed to transform a swirl of soul-searching and uncertainty into an intimate piece that he performed with gentle swagger.
That amiable sense of confidence, combined with the courageous expression of insecurity and wonder in a sterling tenor, was a hallmark of Creel's persona onstage.
There was a determined sweetness to his Tony Award-winning turn as the big-city dreamer Cornelius Hackl in "Hello, Dolly!" starring Bette Midler in 2017. In the song "It Only Takes a Moment," when Cornelius insists to the courtroom that he's in love with the milliner Irene Molloy, it was possible to see every stage of his adoration for her flash across Creel's face with escalating degrees of delight.
The ease and transparency with which Creel wore his charm made him a musical comedy natural, including in his first Broadway role in 2002, as the carefree paper clip salesman Jimmy Smith, opposite Sutton Foster in "Thoroughly Modern Millie," a breakout performance for which he earned his first Tony nomination.
The "ding" that accompanied Creel's smile could also signal the threat of mischief, as in his delectable dual turn as the Wolf and Cinderella's Prince in the recent Broadway revival of "Into the Woods." He brought a more gentile version of that suave villainy to the two-timing Steven Kodaly in "She Loves Me," opposite Jane Krakowski in 2016. His sly comic air also led to stints in the replacement casts of "The Book of Mormon" and "Waitress." (One video that brought me to tears: Creel's at-the-piano rendition of the latter show's wrenching ballad of self-determination, "She Used to Be Mine.")
The tug-of-war between idealism and harsh reality that Creel explored in "Walk on Through" was also a feature of his performance as Claude, the protagonist shouldering the conscience of a generation in "Hair," for which he also earned a Tony nomination, in 2009. For all the hip-churning ardor and defiance he brought to the song "I Got Life," there were also tremors of fear in facing the unknown.
In the final moments of "Walk on Through," Creel seemed to find what he'd gone to the Met searching for. "Who I am -- who I'll always be -- who I'm trying to find each day is just a man wading through mystery," he sang. "Flailing toward the light in my own way."
