Wanted: Musical review

Wanted review

Wanted: The Legend of the Sisters Clarke reaches Broadway with a strong premise, a formidable score and one unresolved structural problem. The musical gives two Black women control of a Western adventure that American popular culture usually reserves for white men. Angelica Chéri and Ross Baum make that reclamation entertaining, angry and musically expansive. Their material is less convincing when the sisters' outlaw story yields too much space to romantic partners, narrators and symbolic villains.

This review is based on the 2020 Signature Theatre world premiere and the substantially revised 2024 Paper Mill Playhouse production, then titled Gun & Powder. The renamed Broadway production does not begin previews until October 15, 2026, so no responsible critic can review its final staging yet. Stevie Walker-Webb remains the director, but the cast, choreography and song sequence have changed. The Broadway version should therefore be treated as a developing production rather than a fixed transfer.

Review: A Western With Better Questions Than Answers

The story begins with a practical injustice. Tallulah Clarke may lose her Texas home because sharecropping has converted labor into permanent debt. Her light-skinned daughters, Mary and Martha, decide to pass as white, travel beyond the farm and obtain the money their mother needs. Employment soon gives way to robbery. The sisters discover that a pale face, a convincing dress and a loaded gun can open doors that remain closed to their Black neighbors.

That premise gives the musical its strongest dramatic engine. Passing is presented as access, concealment and danger at the same time. Mary enjoys the authority that whiteness appears to grant her. Martha worries about the people excluded from the rooms she can now enter. Their disagreement carries more weight than a conventional argument between caution and recklessness. Each sister is choosing which part of herself can be exposed without producing arrest, abandonment or death.

Chéri does not claim to possess a complete historical record of Mary and Martha Clarke's outlaw career. The sisters were her ancestors, and their story survived through family accounts rather than a thick public archive. The musical uses that uncertainty intelligently. The Kinfolk chorus repeatedly turns action into legend, reminding the audience that history is shaped by whoever survives to tell it.

The difficulty is that the Kinfolk sometimes explain scenes before the characters have lived them. Cameron Kelsall's 2024 TheaterMania review praised the company but found that the direct-address narration could interrupt the central drama. That judgment is persuasive. A musical about hidden identities should allow silence, suspicion and contradiction to accumulate. When the chorus defines the meaning too quickly, the audience loses the pleasure of discovering it.

Music and Lyrics Review

Ross Baum's score is the musical's most immediately persuasive asset. It combines gospel, blues, country, folk and contemporary Broadway writing without treating any style as period decoration. John Clancy's 2024 orchestrations could move from broad romantic strings to sharper roots instrumentation within the same sequence. The result places the sisters inside the mythology of the West while keeping their musical language connected to Black communal memory.

"Cotton" establishes the show's economic argument with blunt efficiency. The crop represents labor, debt and inherited exploitation. Tallulah and the Kinfolk do not need a history lecture because the rhythm of the work already explains the trap. The musical is strongest in passages like this, where a physical action carries the political idea.

"Gun & Powder" provides the show's cleanest central metaphor. Gunpowder gives the sisters physical leverage, while face powder alters how white society classifies them. Both tools create temporary power. Both can betray them. Chéri's lyric makes passing part of the action rather than a separate theme inserted between robberies.

The score also asks a great deal of its singers. Naveen Kumar's 2024 review noted that the music leans heavily on vocal display and could use greater restraint. The criticism is fair. Several songs build toward sustained belts because the performers can deliver them, even when the scene needs suspicion, shame or private calculation. A character who has spent an entire scene hiding should not always finish by singing at maximum exposure.

Baum writes effectively for contrasting voices. Mary receives assertive lines that expand as her confidence grows. Martha's material tends to turn inward, especially when passing damages her relationship with Elijah. Tallulah's music draws from gospel authority and family memory. The announced Broadway casting of Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Ledisi and Luke James suggests that these contrasts will remain central to the new production.

Where the Story Loses Focus

The first act has a clear destination. Mary and Martha leave home, test their disguises, discover their power and cross a violent line. Peter Marks wrote in 2020 that the act built efficiently toward its climax. He also identified the musical's larger problem: the second act lost dramatic pressure while trying to resolve too many ideas.

The Paper Mill revision improved the scale and confidence of the staging, but the imbalance remained visible. Mary and Jesse's relationship occupied substantial space, while Martha sometimes receded despite the musical's promise of two sisters at its center. Kelsall argued that future revisions needed to restore equilibrium between their stories. The point is essential. The title now names the Sisters Clarke, plural. The book must make both journeys indispensable.

Jesse also presents a delicate writing problem. A white man who discovers that the woman he loves is Black can reveal the emotional danger of Mary's disguise. His reaction should not become the production's moral climax. Marks objected in 2020 when Jesse received the late song "Even Human," because the sisters' survival had carried the story for most of the evening. The current song list still includes "Even Human," although its Broadway placement and performer have not been confirmed.

The villains can be broad as well. Sharecropping, racial terror and economic fraud already provide precise sources of danger. The musical gains little when an antagonist behaves like a generic Western monster. Chéri's writing is sharper when respectable systems commit the violence. A debt ledger can be more frightening than a theatrical sneer because the ledger carries legal authority.

Staging and Design

Stevie Walker-Webb's 2024 staging treated the musical as a legend in motion. Beowulf Boritt's set created an expansive Western frame without trying to reproduce every Texas location. Emilio Sosa's costumes made race and class immediately legible, which was especially important when the sisters changed how strangers perceived them. Tiffany Rea-Fisher's choreography gave the Kinfolk physical authority during the larger ensemble passages.

Kelsall praised Walker-Webb's stage pictures but found the first act overstuffed and a surreal second-act device inconsistent with the surrounding production. Those criticisms describe a musical still negotiating its scale. Wanted needs spectacle because Mary and Martha are claiming mythic space. It also needs concentration because their disguises work through minute details of posture, speech and observation.

The Broadway staging introduces choreographer Chelsey Arce, so the movement will not simply repeat Paper Mill. Walker-Webb remains in charge of the production's overall argument. His central task is to make the legend grow without allowing the sisters to disappear inside it.

Performances and Broadway Prospects

The earlier productions established the musical as a demanding vehicle for its leading women. Solea Pfeiffer originated Mary at Signature Theatre in 2020 and now returns for Broadway. Liisi LaFontaine played Martha at Paper Mill in 2024 and continues in the role. Their shared history with different versions of the show may help preserve the conflict between Mary's appetite for reinvention and Martha's fear of erasure.

Ledisi's Tallulah could substantially alter the family's musical center. Tallulah is the reason for the journey, but she cannot vanish after giving her daughters a mission. Ledisi's gospel and rhythm-and-blues authority may give the mother greater dramatic gravity, provided the revised book supplies enough action for the character.

Luke James plays Elijah, whose relationship with Martha exposes the unequal mechanics of passing. Martha can sometimes choose how strangers classify her. Elijah cannot. His role works when he has desires and judgments beyond reacting to Martha's secret. A stronger Elijah would sharpen Martha's story without pushing her away from the center.

Final Verdict

Wanted has the material for an important and popular Broadway musical. Its premise is immediate, its score has a distinct musical vocabulary, and its leading roles demand performers with dramatic and vocal range. The show also understands that outlaw mythology is a form of historical ownership. Mary and Martha seize money, movement and the right to become memorable.

The remaining revisions require discipline. The Kinfolk should clarify the legend without narrating every emotional turn. Martha needs dramatic weight equal to Mary's. Jesse and Elijah should complicate the sisters' choices without replacing them as the story's moral focus. The second act must make the consequences of violence feel as urgent as the first act makes rebellion feel exhilarating.

The 2024 Paper Mill production was exciting enough to justify Broadway interest, yet its weaknesses were structural rather than cosmetic. A new title, larger theater and starry cast cannot repair those issues by themselves. Chéri, Baum and Walker-Webb have spent more than a decade rewriting the piece, and the change from Gun & Powder to Wanted: The Legend of the Sisters Clarke states the correct priority. The final production must keep Mary and Martha at the center of every shot.

Pre-Broadway assessment: 4 out of 5 for the score and central concept; 3.5 out of 5 for the most recently reviewed dramatic structure. A final rating should wait until the Broadway production opens on November 8, 2026.

Review basis: This analysis compares Robert O'Hara's 2020 Signature Theatre premiere with Stevie Walker-Webb's revised 2024 Paper Mill Playhouse production. The Broadway edition begins previews on October 15, 2026, and may contain new songs, scenes, choreography and character emphasis.

Wanted Lyrics: Song List

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