A robust and romantic musical of 1890s Texas, Wanted tells the easily enjoyable, “mostly true” saga of Mary and Martha Clarke, young sisters who the prologue singers assert, “made their own way from farm gals to outlaws to legends.” While doing so, these daring twin daughters of a long-gone white guy and their staunch Black mother Tallulah utilize their light-complected charms to successfully pass themselves off as white women.
Leaving mama and the cotton fields for places where no one knows their identity, Mary and Martha begin to rob at gunpoint banks, trains, saloons, and individuals. Their hold-ups are depicted cheerfully in an upbeat series of brightly composed and swiftly staged episodes. Then men, one white and the other Black, both struck by love for the sisters, complicate the crime spree. Subsequent romances prove love can be dangerous in different ways.
Premiering Sunday at the James Earl Jones Theatre after a long development process under the title Gun & Powder (as the show was known at the Paper Mill Playhouse in 2024) and since rebranded Wanted, this original musical romance unpacks plenty to sing about. Drawing her book and lyrics from family lore, Angelica Chéri distills post-Reconstruction times when Black people, enslaved thirty years before, struggle for economic freedom in rowdy, whitey, southwest Texas. Racial identity, Jim Crow injustice, and empowerment, both social and female, are among issues arising during the two-act musical’s increasingly melodramatic doings.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Debuting on Broadway along with Chéri, composer Ross Baum fuels the busy, aspirational saga with a variety of tasty songs and attractive music-drama passages mostly based upon a sturdy, catchy foundation of rhythm & blues. Soulful ballads, honky-tonk arias, and several swelling, gospel-style anthems drive and/or decorate the storyline. The lyrics are clunky but tend to be smoothed over (or smothered) in the rich, countrified arrangements and a complex, even tricky, sound design. The words get lost particularly amid plenty of gorgeous choral singing which elevates the entire production in more ways than musically.
As a musical drama, Wanted is strengthened and distinguished by the “Kinfolk,” its roving choir of ancestors dressed in gauzy white garments whose frequent appearances in misty circumstances bless the show with a mythical grandeur. Led by an electrifying Melody A. Betts, swaying with the rhythms of their music, the Kinfolk choir delivers a fervent blend of heavenly voices that erupts into thrilling vocal fireworks. Popping into view now and then as the wise mother the sisters left behind at home is Ledisi, yet another remarkable singer whose soulful pyrotechnics gets the audience swooning.
The story’s misleading ladies are capably portrayed by Solea Pfeiffer as Mary, who enjoys living in luxury as a white babydoll, and a contrasting Liisi LaFontaine as Martha, the sober-minded twin who declares, “Ain’t no fairy tales in cotton fields.” Their infatuated beaux, the ardent Bradley Jaden and a low-keyed Luke James, look fine and sing even better. Bringing welcome comedy into the story, Aurelia Williams and Awa Sal Secka nearly steal the show with their slyly funny teamwork as sharp-eyed and side-eyeing aunties who recognize the sisters’ deception.
Sporting stylized clothes of Texas in those times designed by Emilio Sosa and animated by Chelsey Arce’s choreography, a hard-working ensemble moves quickly through their paces as the general population of Texas. It’s tiresome how all the white people here are depicted as predators or terribly racist, but that’s how many folks were back then. The characters’ justification for robbery because white people previously stole entire generations of Black lives seems rather a stretch, but so is the dubious morality beneath musicals such as Guys and Dolls, Chicago, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, among others.
Neatly meshing effective performances and terrific singing with excellent visuals, Stevie Walker-Webb, the director, delivers Wanted as a solid Broadway production that looks as good as it sounds in Beowulf Boritt’s handsome scenic design. Lending the show a smart sense of occasion, an imaginative and informative Wild West frame masks the theater’s proscenium. The show unfolds amid a dark skeleton of rustic beams suggesting a barn as dozens of hurricane lanterns flicker above. The barn jackknifes as separate units to be a railroad car, a saloon, a hotel, and other Texas places as needed. In the deep background, animated projections designed by Stefania Bulbarella present landscapes, wallpaper, flocks of birds and similarly pretty vistas.
Wanted opened November 8, 2026, at the James Earl Jones Theatre. Tickets and information: wantedmusical.com
