Interview: Gavin Creel reflects on returning to live theater with INTO THE WOODS, Sondheim's legacy, and his new original show

I interviewed Tony Award winner Gavin Creel about his experience as The Wolf/Cinderella's Prince in the national tour of Stephen Sondheim's INTO THE WOODS. The production started as a City Center Encores staging and later transferred to Broadway. Now, Chicago audiences can see the tour - with some of the original Broadway company, including Gavin himself- through May 7.

Gavin reflected on returning to live theater post-pandemic, Sondheim's legacy, the future of Broadway, and his work on his original new show WALK ON THROUGH inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

INTO THE WOODS was the first musical you did back on Broadway following the pandemic, and now you're reprising your roles on tour. Talk to me about what the experience has been like. What excited you about this production?

I think this was more of a practical decision for me of just needing some purpose. And it's not necessarily a role I thought a lot about or roles I thought a lot about. It was more just the fact that one of my best friends was playing the Baker's Wife, Sara [Bareilles], and I hadn't worked in three years, or at that time, two years. I was kind of spooked, like, "Do I have it? Can I do this? And do I want to do this anymore?"

And it seemed like a really great entry point just to experiment and play. And it seemed like a very small time commitment, which is hilarious as we sit here a year later in Chicago doing the show. So that's what was sort of the entry point. I knew Lear [deBesonnet] was a friend, our director, and I thought it would just be a really innocuous quick couple of weeks. And frankly, I needed health insurance, because not working for two years...you have to work so many weeks a year to get six months or a year of health insurance. And I had no health insurance. So I was like, well, this will get me started.

I call it the great surprise of my career that each step of the way I've been surprised by it, and what it is and what we are up to. And the way the response of the audience has been sort of rock concert-y and to think that this little nerdy, just deceptive, children's-esque show that Sondheim wrote could possibly be captivating people and myself in a way that, it's just everything's a surprise.

This is one of the first major Sondheim revivals since his death in November 2021. Do you think there's any moments in the show you reflect on differently because of that, both because of the pandemic, and then also because of the fact that this is now a tribute to him?

The thing that sort of strikes me is the moment when we all walk out on stage at the very end just sort of standing as ourselves, the characters we played in our costumes...when we walk out and we sing, "Careful the wish you make/wishes are children/careful the path you take/wishes come true, not free."

There's just something that sort of feels something holy about that moment, in the simplicity of the staging, and then the directive to the audience of like, "Listen to us. We have one last thing to say to you before we go." That moment feels holy, and sort of blessed in a really beautiful way by him, I think.

What's your history with INTO THE WOODS? Obviously the show debuted on Broadway in 1987, so I'd love to know.

I was in sixth grade in 1987. And I I listened to the soundtrack more in high school years later. I came upon it in high school and saw the video, and I played the Baker in college my sophomore year in a student production. Other than that, it's just this. I knew some of the music, and one of my favorite things was the Sondheim celebration at Carnegie Hall in 1991 that Susan Stroman and Scott Ellis put together. And I remember thinking how lucky I would be to meet him or work with him, and I got the pleasure to do that with BOUNCE in 2003. I just loved the music. I love that it's seemingly more accessible Sondheim. It's sort of like the entry point for a lot of people who don't understand Sondheim, even though it's, I'm so used to everything he's written. I think the older it gets, the more the world becomes used to his music, but remember when it came out people were asking, "What is this? It's not hummable. And I don't understand. It's so quirky, and the music is so weird and atonal." And now it's obviously extremely melodic and nostalgic even.

I think INTO THE WOODS has had such success [because[ a lot of people have done it and INTO THE WOODS Junior at their high schools or their community theaters or have seen the movie. It's just been around longer, so people have marinated in it longer. But when it first came out, it was rare that one of Sondheim's shows ever made money or succeeded. It's really thrilling to see that this one is making so much money and reaching so many people and sort of reigniting a passion for his work, even in his passing.

You play two really different roles in this show: The Wolf and Cinderella's Prince. How did you develop both of them?

It was so fast. It was insane, throwing spaghetti against the wall kind of thing. So it was like big choices, instincts, play. I still try to play, like ridiculously so, and mine wickedness and fun and joy and make my cast members giggle and make the audience giggle. I get the luxury with these two characters to be, and especially the way I've crafted the Prince, well, the Wolf is a little more, you know, mustache twirling and maniacal or whatever. But the Prince I've enjoyed making him a little grander, broader, aloof, idiotic. Rather than maybe how it was originally played was a little more strapping, handsome guy who, yes, that's really funny because you think that guy's an idiot. But I like playing a little winking with the audience. Because our production is a concert. It was presented as a concert of the musical. And that's what makes it different [with] the orchestra sitting on the stage. We're all playing almost all the scenes in one right down front...I pride myself and give myself permission to play a little broader, and it's really fun to do.

I love both of the characters. And I love to get to play two different parts. I sometimes forget that I play two different parts because I spend most of the time as the prince. So every once in a while, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I was the Wolf two hours ago."

The Wolf's solo number "Hello, Little Girl" is sort of notorious in the musical theater world because it's sometimes considered predatory in more ways than one. Likewise, Little Red's response "I Know Things Now" can be coded as about having vaguely a new experience and potentially a more overtly sexual one. How did you approach the number given all of the layers to it?

I said in no part do I want to be playing a character at all in any way that's predatory or playing it taking advantage of Little Red. Our director Lear completely agreed with me. She said absolutely not. It's 2023. At the time, it was 2022. We're not doing that. And she said, "All she is, is chicken. You're hungry as can be. All you see is bones, meat, flesh. You're just a carnivore; you just are hungry."

When I enter I'm almost drunk with hunger. And I see her like "Food!" And it's just food. It's not what I believe it was written to be in the beginning was...I mean, the costume. The original costume was beyond overt and explicit. And I just saw Andrea Hood's sketch [for our production] and Lear's direction and the cane and I just thought, "Yes, I see. This is not something that we need to play into at all."

Because it's just, I think it's not necessary. It may have worked at a time in 1987, when we weren't awake to these things. But we are now, and it's not appropriate. So the only challenge is the title. When I say it twice in the beginning. I'm just like, with that creepy music underneath. I tried to just like, play it like, wildly fun rather than disgusting.

When we last spoke in June 2021, you told me you were working on your new show with the Met? What's going on with that?

Yes, I'm really excited to share what I'm making....There's more people on stage than just me, but it's certainly about my story and my experience at that time in my life, and basically a reflection on my life and humbling myself before the masterpieces of this world renowned museum, through the lens of a person who had never been there and doesn't know anything about museums and feels like an idiot, and honestly doesn't have the attention span for that kind of thing.

The assignment ended up being my life raft in the middle of the pandemic, and because everything I had and knew in my life had been taken... you know, it was all loss. And it was just a terrible, terrible time. And thank God for this project, because I just sat in my house alone, thinking about those pieces of art that I had been exploring for like a year and a half and going to the museum. And when the museum shut down in the middle of it, where you couldn't even go in, and I was looking online and studying the website and looking at pictures and reading.

And what I created is something I am really proud of, and I can't wait to share, that's just an examination on life and love and loneliness through art. And as somebody who's a novice, and I've been lucky enough in my career to have this really fortunate varied, opportunity-rich life. And yet still, here I am, was, and am, in this mid-life moment where I was just not well, not happy. And I wanted to examine that through this piece.

I'm hoping we will be doing an Off-Broadway production this fall. I can't announce anything officially. But I'm dropping that in. I don't know if I've said that officially yet. But we're in the process of finalizing details, and we'll be announcing it soon. But I'm really excited to start it there and then grow it. I want to do it on Broadway. I want to tour it around the world. I want to share it with as many people as I can. And just sort of celebrate creativity. It's been a great joy and struggle and challenge of mine. And I mean literally I'm just before this call, I was over there writing, you know, so I'm constantly working on it and thinking about it and just ruminating.

What do you think are some of the biggest opportunities and challenges for Broadway now that it's back?

The biggest opportunity and challenge I think we have is, I don't want to go back to the way we did Broadway and theater, commercial theater, even non-profit theater, everything. I want to take the best parts of it and toss the bullsh*t. I just think the imbalance and the inequity in the business has become really super clear to me, not just foremost, racial inequity and opportunities that are not afforded to people who are non-white. I've been given so many opportunities that I think I am eternally grateful for it. But the more I talk to my colleagues of color in our industry, I'm humbled and embarrassed by what would I have had to pass? What had to have not had the opportunity to do if there was true equity within the business? And I'm looking at the ways in which that needs to be done. And I don't know all the answers, no one does. But those to me are the moments where like, what are we actually making? What are we writing? What stories are we telling? What's getting produced? How is it getting produced? How are we rehearsing it? It's an opportunity that I feel a lot of people just missed.

I'm most excited about WALK ON THROUGH [the show I'm writing] in the sense that like, here's an opportunity, how can I best live what I hope to find? And within that I am met with unbelievable challenges, pipeline issues, and rigidity within institutions that are not willing to move as quickly or say, "I'm so sorry, but it costs too much, or we can't do it that way." Or I'm like, "Well, isn't that the work that needs to be done?"

Design with less money does make things simpler. I just don't have a lot of sympathy for the argument that "Well, this is what things cost." To me, that's a red flag. That's the red flag, white supremacist culture characteristic thinking. Well, this is how it's been. How it's been has benefited me, you know, but that has not benefited people of color or women. Why is it a white male dominated industry?...Why are there four families, essentially, companies, that own all the real estate, that there's this line of people who want to make theater, and then they start to then try to give those people what they want?...And why are we seeing Broadway as the pinnacle?

With WALK ON THROUGH, I'm thinking about, will [audiences] think it's weird? Is it not really a musical? Is it not really a concert? What is it?...Why don't I just produce it the way I want to produce it and hope that I can tour it around the country in smaller theaters? And maybe you make money from it, that I can funnel back into new projects and education.

I'm bored with the way things have been done. I want to make something weird. I want to do do weird, process-based stuff that may not be flashy and the home may not be commercial theater, in which case, I've been really lucky to have an incredible career in the commercial theater, to make money, to save money, to buy real estate, to have extreme good fortune and privilege. I'm one of the privileged ones. Maybe my job now is "I have enough." Now I can go make weird stuff. And maybe I can convince a few [hundred or thousands of] people to go be weird. Weirdness is cool. Let's make some stuff that's talking about difficult things. That's what Sondheim did.

I'd love to ask you a little bit more about Chicago. You were here in early 2021 for Lyric Opera's Golden Age concert, but also back in 2003 you were at Goodman Theatre for BOUNCE. What can you share about those experiences?

I loved my time with the Goodman. I loved living in Chicago, going to the restaurants, and walking to the Crunch gym in the afternoon...Working out and going to the theater and being in a new Sondheim [musical] and just living a dream at 27 years old. I just remember thinking, "What an unbelievable opportunity I was having." And in such a reputable, successful, creative, major market regional theater. I just thought it was phenomenal.

The Lyric was a really special thing because I was in a really rough place. It was the center of the pandemic. And I love David Chase. And he called and said, "Would you want to do this thing with me?" And I have to be honest, I was terrified. I lost my voice during the pandemic in a way that I was worried it wasn't gonna come back. And I remember the Friday before I flew to Chicago, I was like in the fetal position crying on the floor because I couldn't sing, and I was like, "How am I gonna do this? I know it's taped." But I was in a bad way. And I remember praying like, "If you can get me through this gig. I am going to stop worrying about my voice. If it's crunchy, I'm going to find a way through it. If I'm sick, I'm going to call out. I'm not going to feel bad about it. I'm going to take better care. I'm gonna trust my voice as it ages. as it gets sick, as it's damaged, as it's stressed...I'm not going to beat myself up for it."

And thankfully, I sang pretty well for that thing. And I went, "Okay, deal." And I made pretty good on it. There's moments where the old monster wants to grab on and go, "You're panicking, it's gonna be terrible." [But I knew I would be okay.]

And so I really cherish that time at the Lyric, and everybody there was so lovely. And I thought it was really beautifully shot. And I don't know how many people saw it or anything, but I enjoyed the songs I got to sing. He gave me a few composers that he wanted me to look at and pick songs from. I sang "Popular" from WICKED by Stephen Schwartz and that was great. It was fun to do. I've never done that before.

I've really enjoyed my time in Chicago. And my time now, living on the South Side and looking at the lake and these buildings, and I just feel really fortunate to be down here. And I'm vowing this is a writing time. So when I'm not at work, I'm working on WALK ON THROUGH and trying to get the next draft of the script together so I can start working with the Off-Broadway theater that we're hoping to collaborate with. So it's a creative time while I'm here.

See Gavin Creel in the national tour of INTO THE WOODS at the James M. Nederlander Theater, 24 West Randolph, through May 7, 2023.

Interview by Rachel Weinberg

Interview responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Headshot courtesy of Broadway In Chicago

Production photos by Matthew Murphy

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