Though many of Marty Lauter’s fans know them from Season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race where they captured hearts as Marcia Marcia Marcia, these days, Lauter is slaying the stage in Cabaret at The Kit Kat Club on Broadway, where they play Victor and understudy the leading role of the Emcee.
At a panel highlighting Broadway understudies at BroadwayCon, Lauter performed one of the Emcee’s songs from the show and talked all things Cabaret, from the show’s relevance to modern America to how their run on Drag Race does (and doesn’t) shape their time on stage.
Lauter performed the song “I Don’t Care Much,” which they said comes in the show “after the Emcee has lost quite a bit of his color.”
“I know our production is very secretive,” Lauter said to introduce the song. “The main issue I think they’re really trying to tackle in our production is something that we’re seeing very much right now in the real world, is what the world looks like when you strip away everyone’s differences, and then how the world looks after that happens.”
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“You’ve probably all seen the meme that’s like, how did we go from brat summer to fascist winter?” they added. “I hate to break it to you, girl; that’s literally the plot of Cabaret.” Watch Lauter’s introduction and performance of “I Don’t Care Much” below.
After their performance, Lauter talked about what it’s like to go on as an understudy for Adam Lambert, who currently plays the Emcee.
“I think when people are expecting to see someone else, they’re generally pleasantly surprised by your performance,” Lauter said. “They’re like — I get this at the stage door all the time — ‘We were so bummed that Adam [Lambert] wasn’t gonna be here, but it almost didn’t even matter! You were great!’ Thank you so much.”
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Lauter also discussed how though Drag Race launched them into the spotlight, their drag career had nothing to do with being cast in Cabaret.
“I found drag during the pandemic. And if you are wondering if it helped me get Cabaret, it absolutely did not,” they said. “There was a day in the rehearsal where someone was asking me a question about Drag Race, and our director, Rebecca Frecknall, was like, ‘You were on Drag Race?’ And I was like, ‘Humbling.’ But it was the work that got me the job, so I’m happy with that.”
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