‘Wanted’ Broadway Review: Historical Musical Plays With Gospel Truth

The new musical Wanted has had a long road to the Broadway stage, stretching over a 12-year stop-and-start development process or, if you want to get picky, more than 100 years of real-life (more or less) family lore. The end result is spirited but uneven, a show wherein some very big singing nearly succeeds in drowning out needling plot contrivances and characterizations as thin as a wanted poster.

Based on the real-life sisters Mary and Martha Clarke, who, we’re told, set out in 1890s Texas to pass as white and undertake a robbing spree as a way to get the money needed to help their mother buy the cotton-producing land on which she has toiled for years. From the start, we learn that the events on stage are “mostly true” – Wanted has an ingratiating sense of humor about itself – but the musical is too often less tall tale than tall order, asking us to focus on good intentions rather winning us over with clarity and vision.

With a book and lyrics by Angelica Chéri, an actual descendant of the real Clarke sisters, and music by Ross Baum, Wanted (titled Gun & Powder in earlier incarnations) stars Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine as Mary and Martha, respectively, two impoverished sisters – they work the Texas cotton plantation their mother dreams of owning – whose light skin allows them to pass as white while they embark on their life of crime, staging armed robberies (no bullets in their single gun) everywhere from saloons to churches.

Their motives are pure: They take up arms only after mother Tallulah (Ledisi) is cruelly humiliated when she offers to purchase the parcel from the financially strapped white landowner, who is offended by what he sees as effrontery.

The crime spree proves almost instantly beneficial: The money comes easy, and romance for both sisters presents itself soon enough. Mary, losing sight of their original save-the-farm justifications as she becomes enamored of the good life, falls for the wealthy, white Jesse (Bradley Jaden), while Martha, holding truer to the solid values instilled by mother Tallulah, begins a flirtation with Jesse’s Black servant Elijah (Luke James).

Both affairs are extremely risky: The women must keep their true identities hidden, especially Martha, since their robberies are no less dangerous than the racial concealment. Lynching, the musical’s song lyrics occasionally remind, is always a looming reality.

With a mish-mash score unified by ever-present soaring gospel indulgences that give the vocally talented cast endless opportunity to belt, Wanted struggles to find a consistent tone, at first playing in a rather lighthearted Bonnie and Clyde meets Thelma & Louise sorta way before forging headlong (and unconvincingly) into historical revenge fantasy territory.

This weightier part of the musical feels somehow lackluster or perhaps just unconvincing, missing the desired gut-level satisfaction of long-delayed retribution, the sort of socially conscious vengeance that provided powerful payoffs in Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate, not to mention a big chunk of Quentin Tarantino’s oeuvre. The historical retribution rationale in Wanted feels tacked-on, with even the luxury-loving Mary making an about-face when confronted by a previously unknown fact about her beloved Jesse (a fact that comes as no surprise to the audience or anyone else paying attention).

The attempted shift toward a more serious-minded endeavor isn’t helped by the late-arriving additions to the criminal gang of the Black maids Sissy and Flo, comic stock characters nonetheless well-played by Aurelia Williams and Awa Sal Secka. Like so much else in Wanted, Sissy and Flo seem to have teleported from a different era altogether, a regrettable indulgence in the “sassy maid” trope that here serves to provide exposition and comic relief and use of the word “turkey” as an insult. And let’s hope their repeated insistence “I ain’t one to gossip, but…” is a good-faith homage to the great Kim Wayans, who popularized the phrase (and the delivery) on In Living Color more than 30 years ago.

The production’s tonal inconsistencies extend to Emilio Sosa’s costume design. With most of the characters dressed in some version of period-correct attire, the climactic appearance of outlaw Mary in a get-up that Spirit Halloween might call “Sexy Gunslinger” (form-fitting skinny black jeans, open collar black shirt, low-slung gun holster) might be intentional in a post-modern way, but is jarring nonetheless. Same goes for the out-of-place look designed for the muscular Bradley Jaden’s former slave owner Jesse, whose long-haired man-bun and bicep-showing leather vest seem less 1890s Texas than 1980s MTV. The less said about the come-and-go Texas accents of all concerned, the better.

Again, all of that might well be intentional, but Wanted lacks the force of stylistic vision necessary to pull it off. And if the incongruities work against the show, its opposite – a decided sameness in Baum’s score and Stevie Walker-Webb’s direction – does likewise. From start to finish, every song builds immediately to a roof-raising, applause-soliciting belt, a stacked approach that extends from the main characters to the “kinfolk,” a Greek chorus-style collection of Clarke ancestors dressed like a church choir from beyond, offering context and plot details (and choreographed movement) when the tale needs some padding.

Fortunately, the cast is well equipped to meet the excessive vocal demands, from the principals to the ringer-heavy kinfolk. Certainly no one could blame Ledisi, as the stalwart mother, from indulging in the let-loose approach, otherwise her frequent intrusions (usually as scolding apparition) into the newly live-it-up lives of her daughters would seem more killjoy than they already do.

As the outlaw sisters, Pfeiffer and LaFontaine are likable presences, if infrequently credible as escapees from grueling servitude that’s presented as one step removed from slavery. Even in the field – Beowulf Boritt’s barn-frame set design is unendingly efficient and transmutable – the Clarke sisters appear fresh and robust, their faces seeming powdered not so much for “passing” but for catwalking.

Newcomers to the Broadway stage, 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.

Title: Wanted
Venue: Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theatre
Director: Stevie Walker-Webb
Book & Lyrics: Angelica Chéri
Music: Ross Baum
Cast: Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Ledisi, Luke James, Bradley Jaden, Aurelia Williams, Awa Sal Secka
Running time: 2 hr 30 min (including intermission)