Gavin Creel’s illustrious stage career includes a Tony Award nomination for his 2002 Broadway debut in “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a second nomination for the 2009 revival of “Hair” and a Tony win for 2017’s “Hello Dolly!” starring Bette Midler.
“I learned so much from her, watching her incredible work ethic. There’s nobody else like her in entertainment,” says Creel over the phone from “Hackl house,” the cabin north of New York City he named for Cornelius Hackl, his role in “Hello Dolly!”
“Thanks to that show, I was able to get a little cabin for escape and for writing,” he says.
But Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods” is perhaps the show that looms largest in Creel’s life.
“I watched the VHS tape [of the original 1987 production] with Bernadette Peters over and over as a kid. I listened to the recording while in high school in agony in my bedroom. I was in the closet and didn’t know who I was. The [show’s] allegories that line up with fear and being honest with yourself… I’m excited to now be 47 in April and excited to be revisiting it. What do I hear now as a grown, out, proud performer?”
With its primal fairy tale allegories about fear, loss and the unknown, the original production of “Into the Woods” in 1987 struck many as a commentary on the devastation already wrought by AIDS. The 2002 revival took place shortly after 9/11 and the current production began while Broadway was still reeling from the COVID pandemic. “Producer Jordan Roth said ‘Into the Woods’ is there to hold your hand when you need it most,” says Creel. “These fairy tales want to teach us life lessons about being humans, and Stephen Sondheim put them together in a way that made us, as adult humans, harken back … it is part of your bloodstream.”
Creel reprises his role as Candela’s Prince/Wolf from the acclaimed recent Broadway production when “Into the Woods” arrives March 21–April 2 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. Directed by Lear deBessonet, the musical became the first Broadway hit of the 2022-2023 season after its sold‑out run at New York City Center Encores! The touring cast, including Montego Glover as The Witch, Stephanie J. Block as The Baker’s Wife and Sebastian Arcelus as The Baker, is direct from the Broadway production.
“I don’t think it’s happened since the 1930s that an entire Broadway company has gone out on the road to bring [a show] to people who are not able to come to New York,” says Creel. The cast, he says, is a “wonderful group of people dedicated to the show and we were not ready to be done. So we hopped on the bus.”
This production of “Into the Woods,” says Creel, caught “lightning in a bottle.” Creel’s close friend Sara Bareilles signed on prior to the pandemic to play The Baker’s Wife for the Encores! limited run. So when director Lear deBessonet offered Creel a role, he said yes despite a mere 10 days to learn the whole score, he says. Sondheim’s sophisticated wordplay “is like Shakespeare … I can do a long run and continue to discover more and more within what I’m doing. Sometimes I think, ‘Did he mean that?’ As a composer myself, I realize he probably did,” says Creel.
“Sondheim was at such an expert level by the time he was writing ‘Into the Woods,’ doing things as a writer like setting little puzzles and Easter eggs within the lyrics. And he had such a great partner in James [Lapine] to share his wit and wickedness. It plays so beautifully with the childishness and adultness of it all.”
When the May, 2022 City Center run proved a smash, producer Jordan Roth quickly arranged a summer Broadway engagement, marking the first time “Into the Woods” was on Broadway in 20 years. Following tremendous critical acclaim and audience demand, it was extended twice and finally ended its Broadway run on January 8, 2023.
“It kept joyfully snowballing into this beautiful thing,” recalls Creel. “We found out a few weeks into the Broadway run that things had been shifted so we could stay longer, through the holidays.” It was especially gratifying that such surprising success happened “after what we came out of, when it was so terrifying and we all wondered, ‘Is this business done? Are people going to sit in a theater again?’ So every step of the way, when it kept expanding, I just felt so attached to that time.”
Creel’s connection to Boston dates to the start of his career. “I did ‘Fame’ the musical when I first graduated college and we played the Colonial. I remember being backstage, the old wooden dressing room, it was like sitting in history. I loved it there,” he says. In 2011, Creel starred with Lea DeLaria in the Diane Paulus-directed “Prometheus Bound” at the A.R.T.
Creel has performed in the Broadway at The Art House series in Provincetown with Seth Rudetsky. “Provincetown is the greatest to be with people I know are family in the pink sense,” he says. “l love its diversity of queer people, in all shapes and sizes.”
While he was performing in “Hair” in 2009, Creel and his fellow Tony nominee Rory O’Malley from “The Book of Mormon” and production coordinator Jenny Kanelos launched “Broadway Impact” to mobilize the theater community around the issue of marriage equality. The organization sponsored a letter-writing campaign in support of the New York marriage-equality bill, produced a marriage-equality rally in Times Square (that featured Audra McDonald, Cynthia Nixon and David Hyde Pierce) and produced a summer concert series with the Broadway casts of “American Idiot,” “Memphis” and “Next to Normal.”
Creel’s joyful embrace of “Into the Woods” feels intimately rooted in the show’s restorative power for both performers and audiences. “We were still wearing masks at City Center, unsure whether we’d succeed. We were the first show to open the new [Broadway] season that summer. I still feel so lucky. I said yes to the tour because I’m still attached to that feeling of being humbled,” says Creel. “I really appreciate being in something that has a beautiful message of its time and of this time, too.”
More: intothewoodsbway.com
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