Woah there, pardner. The first musical — and one of the few original musicals — of the 2026-2027 Broadway season premiered on Sunday night, putting a little song in what’s so far been a play-heavy lineup. After a 12-year trip through the development process, Wanted raised its curtain on at the James Earl Jones Theatre where the Tony-winning Liberation tread the boards last season, adding some new voices to the 2027 Tony race.
Previously titled Gun & Powder, Wanted is inspired by the true story of Mary and Martha Clarke, two Black siblings who embarked on dangerous, but lucrative careers as outlaws in 1890s Texas. The sisters passed for white in that deeply racist society, and that aspect of their lives becomes a key plot point in the musical, which features books and lyrics by Angelica Chéri, a Clarke family descendent who grew up hearing stories about her ancestors’s legendary exploits.
Those stories are translated into a narrative that finds Mary and Martha embracing outlaw life as a way to raise the funds to help their mother, Tallulah (Ledisi), buy the property they’ve been working for years as sharecroppers. Their crime spree eventually lands them in a small frontier town where Mary falls in love with Jesse Banks (Bradley Jaden), and that burgeoning relationship causes a rift between the sisters. But when Martha learns of Jesse’s dark past, there’s suddenly a renewed urgency to extricate her sibling from his clutches.
Like last season, the lineup of 2026-2027 musicals is notably light on non-I.P. based productions. That makes Wanted and the upcoming Galileo stand apart from a pack that includes shows like Dolly, Warriors, Paddington, Dirty Dancing, and Purple Rain. So critics went into Wanted likely hoping to champion an original musical, and none of them offer outright pans. But the overall consensus seems to be that the show doesn’t entirely hit the bullseye.
Entertainment Weekly‘s Shania Russell offers one of the more positive reviews, writing: “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.
“Flawed as it may be, Wanted has a winning quality that constantly breaks through,” Russell adds. “It’s that sense of pride, always, evident in every aspect of the productuion: It’s imbued in the music and exploding out of the performances, from the gravitas that Ledisi wields to the vulnerability etched in Pfeiffer’s every run.”
New York Theatre Guide’s Caroline Cao similarly seeks to emphasize the production’s strengths over its weaknesses. “Wanted remains patchy in its serviceable-to-good lyricism, but it refreshingly paves a less trod path on the Great White Way,” she observes. “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.”
Over in Deadline, Greg Evans offers a more mixed take, calling the show “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.”
“Newcomers to the Broadway stage, Pfeiffer and LaFontaine have impressive voices, and do their best as actors to put blood into thinly written characters,” Evans adds. “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.”
Variety‘s Aramide Tinubu agrees that a “muted” narrative is Wanted‘s main downfall. “Aside from a couple of stick-ups and some seducing and scheming, the rebel storyline fizzles before it even really gets started,” she writes. “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.
The Guardian‘s Richard Lawson comes the closest to a total dismissal of Wanted in his two-star review, unfavorably comparing it to its previous iteration. “Despite its dynamic subject matter – marginalized people violently asserting themselves in a repressive time and place – this is a dismayingly tame production, albeit a more muscular one than was staged at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse in 2024.”
“Perhaps in the next iteration of Wanted, wherever and whenever that might be, that story will be more sharply realized,” he concludes. “As is, this is a western that’s not wild enough, a melodrama lacking heat, a song showcase that grows repetitive in all its smooth and unsurprising melody.”
