Theater News

Gavin Creel Is Feeling Super

The popular actor previews The League of Broadway Super Friends concert and discusses his other new projects.

Gavin Creel
(© Tristan Fuge)
Gavin Creel
(© Tristan Fuge)

One of the theater world’s most popular young stars, Gavin Creel has graced Broadway in such shows as Thoroughly Modern Millie, Mary Poppins, and Hair. While he been absent from New York stages for a while, on Sunday, June 5, he will participate in a special post-show talkback of the Broadway play The Normal Heart, and on Tuesday, June 7, he will join Lindsay Mendez, Greg Naughton, Kelli O’Hara, and Sherie Rene Scott for a special benefit concert, The League of Broadway Super Friends, presented by Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records, at Le Poisson Rouge. TheaterMania recently caught up with Creel to talk about the concert and his other projects.


THEATERMANIA: How did this group come about?
GAVIN CREEL: We came together for a song for one event, and we all thought this is really fun. We don’t ever get the chance to get together and sing covers and harmonies, and I think we sounded good. Then I got a call from Sherie to get the band together for this concert, and our hope is to be able to grow something that can continue. This concert is benefiting pancreatic cancer research, and I think it’s so great whenever our community gets together for a great cause.


TM: What can you tell us about the concert?
GC: It’s going to be a really casual evening, more sharing than performing in a formal way. We’re doing lots of stuff from 1970s, like Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It’s all pop songs. There’s nothing from theater.


TM: Will you performing any of your own material?
GC: Yes, I picked an original tune of mine called “You.” Last year, my friend Celia Keenan-Bolger called me and asked me to sing something at her wedding [to actor John Ellison Conlee]. It actually started with just three chords, and ended up being something so emotional.

TM: Wow, so you’re available as a wedding singer?
GC: If I could make money, I’d sing it at every wedding. I’m really proud of this song. It’s simple, but a bit quirky, and has a bit of a story. And I’m definitely interested in having other people hear my music and maybe cover it. That’s how you make money as a songwriter.


TM: Earlier this year, you did this musical Prometheus Bound up at A.R.T. in Cambridge. Do you think it might make it to New York?
GC: I haven’t heard anything yet about it, and I know the minute you disband a group of actors, it is hard to get them back together. I had fun doing it, although it was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done. The music was loud, high, and fast, and I spent the whole show half-naked on a rock. It’s the kind of thing that interests me. I know I’d work more if I was interested in the middle of road stuff.


TM: What projects are you working on right now?
My friends Paris Remillard and Tommar Wilson from Hair and I are going to start a production company, and our first big project is to do a music video for a brand new song of mine. I’m also writing tons of songs, some of which will end probably end up in this new musical I’m writing with my friend Jonathan Bernstein. We’re going upstate this summer to do some work on it. I am always trying to find ways to stay relevant as an artist.