Gavin Creel
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale, AZ, March 8, 2019
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards for Cabaret Scenes
Too many cabaret artists stand center stage gripping the mic stand and singing. The big Broadway voices get away with it with the sheer power of their voices. Gavin Creel, the Tony-Award winner for the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! And veteran of many Broadway shows and national tours, has singer “super powers.” He had the confidence to enter quietly through the back of the theater singing “As If We Never Said Goodbye” (Andrew Lloyd Webber/Don Black & Christopher Hampton) getting up close and personal with the audience. He followed with “Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Life” (David Shire/Richard Maltby, Jr.) from Starting Here, Starting Now. Over the course of two hours we heard a small smattering of his repertoire, including “I Got Life” (Galt MacDermot/Gerome Ragni & James Rado) and “What Do I Need with Love” (Jeanine Tesori/Dick Scanlon) from his Tony-nominated performances in Hair and Thoroughly Modern Millie, respectively.
Creel was trained in the Broadway classics and the Great American Songbook, and he offered up a lovely “All the Things You Are” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein). He and Seth Rudetsky (host/MD) agreed that rhyme is the bedrock of musical theater and modern works can be lazy in that regard. He paid homage to his theatrical credits with songs from The Book of Mormon and She Loves Me and spoke of his adoration for Bette Midler. The encore was Creel alone at the piano with his sensitive “She Used to Be Mine” (Sara Bareilles). Rudetsky did not have to work hard to keep Creel talking. He offered up many stories as well as his philosophy that life is not a ladder but a lily pond: theater is the land of misfit frogs, and he urged us to join his campaign for kindness and acceptance of all.
