The Broadway community is devastated and heartbroken by the untimely death of Tony Award-winning actor Gavin Creel, who died last week at 48 years old from cancer. Creel rose to musical theater fame in 2002 as the dashing Jimmy Smith in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” alongside Sutton Foster. He subsequently appeared in Broadway revivals of “La Cage aux Folles,” “Hair” (in which he starred as the introspective Claude), “She Loves Me” (where he made a winning, broadly comic turn), “Hello, Dolly!” (for which he won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor as the shop clerk Cornelius Hackl), and “Into the Woods” (doubling as the Wolf and Cinderella’s Prince). A year ago, Creel appeared Off-Broadway in the solo work “Walk on Through: Confessions of a Museum Novice.” Creel was also a much-respected gay rights activist.
Following his death, the Broadway League (the trade organization representing Broadway theater owners and producers) announced that the lights of a handful of Broadway theaters (one to represent each theater owner on Broadway) would be dimmed in Creel’s memory., However, the gesture has upset many of Creel’s fans, friends, and colleagues, who feel that the lights of all 41 Broadway theaters should be dimmed in his honor. A petition on change.org in support of a full dimming ceremony has received over 21,000 signatures. Several additional theaters have also announced that they will join in the dimming ceremony, including the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (where Creel appeared in “Hair”) and the Eugene O’Neill Theatre (where Creel appeared in “The Book of Mormon”).
The practice of dimming the lights of Broadway has been subject to criticism and reversals in the past. Earlier this year, the Broadway League altered a decision to dim the lights of only select theaters in honor of three-time Tony Award-winning actor and dancer Hinton Battle (“The Wiz,” “Miss Saigon”) to all theaters following a round of criticism on social media. In 2014, the Broadway League reversed a decision not to dim the lights in honor of the comic Joan Rivers.
Last week, a selective dimming was also announced in honor of Adrian Bailey, who died last month at age 67, which will take place on Oct. 17. (One of the theaters to be dimmed is the Lunt Fontanne, where Bailey sustained severe injuries in an onstage accident in 2008 that impaired his mobility and ended his acting career.) The lights of every Broadway theater were dimmed last month in honor of James Earl Jones. No dimming, selective or full, has been announced in honor of Ken Page, the original Old Deuteronomy in “Cats,” who died on Sept. 30 at age 70.
