Wanted
Opening Night: November 8, 2026
Theater: James Earl Jones Theatre
Website: wantedmusical.com
Texas, 1893 — Twin sisters Mary and Martha Clarke are on the run. As Black women who pass for white and hide in plain sight, they straddle a dangerous line between two Americas. When powerful forces close in to keep their family from claiming a future of their own, Mary and Martha are driven to desperate measures to save their mother and their family’s legacy. Forced to do the unthinkable in order to survive, the sisters fight for self-determination, dignity, and an inheritance long denied. Through it all, the Kinfolk, a vibrant chorus of ancestors, guide Mary and Martha forward on an odyssey of sisterhood, rebellion, and freedom.
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November 8, 2026
This messiness is a shame because a great musical could yet be somewhere inside this odd contraption. It might need to be much shorter, with fewer of Baum’s songs, which tend to crowd one another out in this overstuffed version; it might need to return to the drawing board to work out its plot. But Chéri displays an emotional and moral imagination in her musical’s passing narrative that she does not with the vigilante part of her great-great aunts’ legend. I wanted to hear more.
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November 8, 2026
Sadly, the frequently disjointed final product too often feels like a victim of overdevelopment. Following a 12-year process of writing, rewriting and two out-of-town tryouts, Wanted now packs in multiple ambitious narrative goals: high-spirited western action, twin love stories, a mediation on racial assimilation and a reflection on the still-unfulfilled promise of reconstruction. It is a lot for one musical to carry—all the more so when the authors, Chéri and Baum, are both making their Broadway debuts. In the production on stage at the Jones, one feels that strain, the struggle of an uncertain object pulled in several directions at once.
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November 8, 2026
Wanted is at its most satisfying when it surrenders to the guttural. But that catharsis comes in fits and starts, getting caught in the throat of a poked and prodded musical that’s become all too self-conscious. To be sure, none of that restraint is coming from the show’s three lead actresses. Liisi LaFontaine and Solea Pfeiffer are giving star-making performances as Martha and Mary Clarke.
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November 8, 2026
Pfeiffer and LaFontaine have impressive voices, and do their best as actors to put blood into thinly written characters. Wanted, as a modestly diverting entertainment, didn’t need to make history, but its failure to spin a dizzying yarn out of an intriguing bit of family lore is a missed opportunity.
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November 8, 2026
Wanted offers a bold reframing of the familiar tropes, backed by powerhouse performances and Ross Baum’s anthem-driven score, part-western, pop, soul, and gospel. The excitement of the story ebbs and flows but when it hits its stride, the new musical is a crowd-pleaser as self-assured as the outlaw sisters that it follows.
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November 8, 2026
In the end, because of its overstuffed book and themes, “Wanted” doesn’t quite know what it’s about, resulting in an underwhelming account of who the Clarke sisters were and why their story stands out in American history. Lacking true focus and direction, and leaning heavily on a rushed love story, “Wanted” works best as a musical album. As a Broadway show, however, it simply doesn’t measure up.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
Disappointingly lacking in levels are Chéri and Baum’s songs, almost all of which are pitched as belting showstoppers. Wanted is a musical near entirely built out of pop- and gospel-inflected 11 o’clock numbers; even the romantic ballads and duets whip themselves up into a frenzy after a verse or two. Everyone in the cast has the pipes to pull off all this maximalism, but one craves a softer song here and there. More specifically story-driven numbers might have helped flesh out characters that are otherwise underdeveloped.
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November 8, 2026
Beyond the show’s two maids, the most riveting aspect of “Wanted” is the sly way in which Pfeiffer’s Mary goes from real gold digger to committed lover with her follow-up song, “The Way I Am.” With these two back-to-back hits, Ross Baum delivers beguiling melodies that are a kind of elevated recitative. Elsewhere, this Broadway-debutant composer comes down with a bad case of anthem-itis. Several songs begin small and promisingly, but after a stanza or two, the tunes inevitably go big and quickly crescendo into deafening. It’s difficult to tell if the audience is applauding the performer or the sound design by Gareth Owens.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
The book for the musical, also written by Chéri, is full of holes and the plotting is so convoluted and farfetched it’s hard to know who to root for… None of that may matter all that much when the company starts to sing, which is right at the very top.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
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.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
The loving twins, played by Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine, are engaging and their Act One relationship with Tallulah (the mononymous Ledisi) is warm and fun. And it’s fun to watch the sibs stick up various racist idiots. This is basically an empowering feminist caper-quest musical (structured not unlike Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” actually) and Ross Baum‘s score not only has a stirring kind of musical energy (not dissimilarly to the score for “The Color Purple“) but comes with rich choral arrangements for the terrific choir-like ensemble, known here as the Kinfolk, a Black chorus instantly making the musical point that it is only white folks the Clarke sisters will fool.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
You cannnot deny the originality of this deeply American musical, or the raw talent on display. Pfeiffer and LaFontaine are the real deal, delivering two of the most memorable Broadway debuts in recent memory. In fact, there’s not a weak singer in the cast. For all its flaws, Wanted earns its place in the spotlight — and challenges us to consider why we still call the Midtown theater district the Great White Way.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 8, 2026
Wanted remains patchy in its serviceable-to-good lyricism, but it refreshingly paves a less trod path on the Great White Way. The musical is adamant about not apologizing for enacting retribution on the bastards who feed off America’s original sin. No doubt the Clarke sisters are blazing, and belting, a trail for strong-willed, complicated Black women in original musicals.
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