How far would you go to get everything you ever wanted? That question sits at the heart of Wanted, the soulful new musical arriving on Broadway this fall as the first original musical of the 2026-27 season. Formerly titled Gun & Powder, the show tells the mostly-true story of Mary and Martha Clarke, twin sisters in 1893 Texas who pass as white to survive in a brutally divided America — and who are ultimately pushed into a life of crime to save their family. With a score rooted in gospel, blues, and R&B, a starry cast led by Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Grammy winner Ledisi, and Grammy nominee Luke James, and direction by Tony nominee Stevie Walker-Webb, Wanted arrives at the James Earl Jones Theatre carrying years of development and glowing regional buzz behind it.

Here is everything to know about Wanted on Broadway — where the true story came from, how the show evolved from a graduate school thesis into a full Broadway musical, what happens in the story, who is starring, and what critics have said about it so far.

Background: The True Story Behind Wanted

Wanted is based on real family history. Its book writer and lyricist, Angelica Chéri, is a great-great-niece of Mary and Martha Clarke, and she grew up hearing stories about her outlaw ancestors passed down as family folklore. The Clarke sisters were African American twins living in Texas around the turn of the twentieth century who could pass as white — a fact that allowed them to move between two starkly different Americas, but that also came with its own dangers, compromises, and moral costs. According to the musical’s telling, the sisters set out to earn enough money to pay off a predatory sharecropper debt threatening to take their mother Tallulah’s home, a mission that pushes them from farm girls into a far more dangerous life as outlaws.

Chéri spent roughly a decade developing the material into a stage musical, teaming with composer Ross Baum, whom she met while both were students in New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. The project began as their graduate thesis and, after an initial 2015 workshop, the pair made the decision to substantially rewrite the entire show before continuing its development. Chéri has said she felt strongly that her ancestors’ story deserved a place in the world, and that conviction carried the project through a long road from a student workshop to Broadway.

Who Are Angelica Chéri and Ross Baum?

Angelica Chéri is a playwright, lyricist, and performer who has been recognized as one of Variety’s “Stars to Watch” and was included on The Washington Post’s “Post Next” list highlighting influential figures shaping culture in 2026. Composer Ross Baum, a recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award, shares those same honors from The Washington Post for his work on the show’s score, which blends gospel, blues, and contemporary R&B influences into a sound distinct from the traditional Broadway songbook.

Production History: From NYU Thesis to Broadway Stage

Long before its Broadway bow, Wanted — under its original title Gun & Powder — moved through a lengthy and carefully staged development process typical of ambitious new musicals. The show was the inaugural workshop production of New York University’s Tisch Center for New Musicals, and it was later selected for the 2017 SigWorks Musical Theater Lab at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia, receiving further development at the 2018 NEXT Festival. Its official world premiere came at Signature Theatre in Arlington on January 28, 2020, marking the musical’s first full production in front of paying audiences.

The show’s biggest pre-Broadway showcase came in the spring of 2024, when Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey — a regional theater with a strong track record of shepherding new musicals toward Broadway, including The Great Gatsby the same season — mounted a lavish new production of Gun & Powder. Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb with choreography by Tiffany Rea-Fisher and music direction by Austin Cook, the Paper Mill staging starred Ciara Renée as Mary Clarke, Liisi LaFontaine as Martha Clarke, Jeannette Bayardelle as Tallulah Clarke, Aaron James McKenzie as Elijah, and Hunter Parrish as the hotel owner Jesse Whitewater. That production, which ran through May 2024, drew strong reviews and effectively launched the musical’s path toward Broadway.

In May 2025, producers announced that the musical would be rebranded from Gun & Powder to its new title, Wanted, as it continued its march toward Broadway, with TRATE Productions’ Robyn and Evan Coles joining the producing team alongside P3 Productions, and Chelsey Arce signing on as choreographer in place of Rea-Fisher. A workshop of the retitled show took place in June 2025 to refine the piece further ahead of casting and a Broadway theater announcement. In spring 2026, the Shubert Organization confirmed that Wanted would play the James Earl Jones Theatre, with previews beginning October 15, 2026 and an opening night set for November 8, 2026 — positioning it as the first new musical of Broadway’s 2026-27 season.

Plot Synopsis

Set in Texas in 1893, Wanted follows twin sisters Mary and Martha Clarke, young Black women who are light-skinned enough to pass as white in a still-segregated America. Desperate to help their mother, Tallulah, settle a crushing sharecropper debt and save the family home in the small town of Marlin, Texas, the sisters leave home in search of money, straddling a dangerous line between the Black world they come from and the white world they must move through to survive.

Their journey brings them into the orbit of Jesse Whitewater, the charming but morally compromised owner of a fine hotel, who takes an interest in the more demure Mary, while the more headstrong Martha finds herself drawn to Elijah, a formerly enslaved man now working as Whitewater’s servant. As the sisters navigate romance, deception, and the increasing risks of the double lives they are leading, the story builds toward the choices that will transform them from ordinary farm girls into the outlaws of family legend — women driven to increasingly desperate and dangerous measures in pursuit of self-determination, dignity, and an inheritance long denied to their family.

Guiding the sisters throughout is “The Kinfolk,” a vibrant ensemble of ancestral spirits who function as a musical chorus, commenting on the action and connecting Mary and Martha’s individual struggle to a much longer lineage of Black resilience, rebellion, and survival in America.

The Broadway Cast

The Broadway production of Wanted is led by a cast that mixes rising musical-theatre stars with two celebrated recording artists making their Broadway debuts.

Meet the Leads

Solea Pfeiffer takes on the role of Mary Clarke. Pfeiffer has built a strong musical-theatre résumé that includes originating leading roles in the national tours of Hamilton and Evita, as well as Broadway and Off-Broadway credits in Almost Famous and Storyville.

Liisi LaFontaine reprises her role as Martha Clarke, having played the part in the show’s earlier iteration at Paper Mill Playhouse. LaFontaine previously starred in the West End productions of Moulin Rouge!, where she originated the role of Satine, and Dreamgirls, where she originated Deena Jones. Her additional credits include the world premiere of Huzzah! at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre and the touring production of Dreamgirls.

Ledisi, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, actress, author, and producer, makes her Broadway debut as Tallulah Clarke, the sisters’ devoted mother whose sharecropper debt sets the story’s events in motion. Ledisi has been a fixture of R&B, jazz, and gospel music for over two decades and has earned more than a dozen Grammy nominations across her recording career.

Luke James, a Grammy-nominated singer known for his work in R&B and for television and film roles including Netflix’s “Marriage Story” and BET’s “American Soul,” plays Elijah, the formerly enslaved man who becomes entangled with Martha over the course of the story.

Creative Team

The Broadway production is directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, an Obie Award winner and Tony Award nominee for his direction of Ain’t No Mo’ at the Public Theater. Choreography is by Chelsey Arce, whose credits include the 2023 Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd and the West End and Broadway productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Casting is handled by Tara Rubin and Olivia Paige West of The TRC Company. The production is produced by P3 Productions (Ben Holtzman, Sammy Lopez, and Fiona Rudin) in association with TRATE Productions (Robyn and Evan Coles).

Earlier design elements from the show’s Paper Mill Playhouse run — including scenic design by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Emilio Sosa, lighting design by Adam Honoré, sound design by Connor Wang, wig, hair, and makeup design by J. Jared Janas and Tony Lauro, orchestrations by John Clancy, fight direction by Rick Sordelet, and intimacy direction by Crista Marie Jackson — gave the production its distinctive look and feel heading into the Broadway transfer, with a full Broadway design team confirmed closer to the show’s opening.

Critical Reception: What Reviewers Have Said

Because Wanted does not begin Broadway previews until October 15, 2026, with an official opening set for November 8, formal Broadway reviews are not yet available. However, the show — under its earlier title Gun & Powder — was extensively reviewed during its April 2024 run at Paper Mill Playhouse, and those notices offer a strong preview of how critics have responded to the material.

Reviewers were largely enthusiastic about the ambition and energy of the piece. BroadwayWorld called the production an exciting and elaborate new musical, praising Stevie Walker-Webb’s direction and describing the score as compelling, with soulful melodies and vibrant, memorable numbers performed by a dream-team cast. TheaterMania similarly praised the show’s stirring performances and staging, noting that librettist Angelica Chéri had crafted the piece from her own family’s lore, while suggesting that some judicious editing could sharpen an already promising musical even further.

The New York Times’ review of the Paper Mill production praised the show as an audacious, rollicking story too often missing from American stages, calling it proof that people who have been kept down have always found ways to fight back through joy and defiance. The same review noted that the score’s blend of gospel and R&B influences leaned heavily on vocal showmanship and could benefit from a bit more restraint, and that the sisters’ rapid transformation into outlaws could use fuller development — constructive notes that the creative team has had two additional years to address ahead of the Broadway transfer.

Trade coverage following the Paper Mill run was similarly positive: Theaterly praised Chéri’s gift for theatricality and Walker-Webb’s staging, calling the result a breathtaking musical as big as its ambitions and as fun-loving as its gun-toting heroines. Taken together, this run of reviews suggests a show that arrives on Broadway with real creative momentum and a devoted following built over a decade of development — along with clear opportunities for the finished Broadway version to tighten its storytelling and further showcase its score. This article will be updated with excerpts and links once official Broadway reviews are published following the November 8 opening.

The Music of Wanted

Ahead of the Broadway run, the creative team released a five-song studio EP featuring music from the show, performed by Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, and members of the Wanted studio cast. The EP includes the tracks “Wide Open Plains,” “The Train,” “Gun & Powder,” “The Way I Am,” and “Freedom,” giving audiences an early taste of Ross Baum’s genre-blending score before the full Broadway cast recording arrives.

Why Broadway Audiences Should See It

Wanted arrives on Broadway as a rare original musical built from real family history rather than an existing film, book, or catalog of previously released songs. Its story of two women navigating race, identity, and survival in the post-Reconstruction South offers a perspective seldom explored on Broadway stages, brought to life through a score rooted in gospel, blues, and R&B rather than a traditional Broadway sound. The production also carries an unusual amount of musical star power for a book musical, with Grammy winner Ledisi and Grammy nominee Luke James joining stage veterans Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine, all under the direction of Tony nominee Stevie Walker-Webb, who has spent years shepherding this exact material from its early workshops to the Broadway stage.

Tickets and Performance Information

Wanted begins previews on October 15, 2026, with an official opening night on November 8, 2026, at the James Earl Jones Theatre, located at 138 West 48th Street in New York City. The production runs approximately two hours and fifteen minutes, including one intermission. Production notes indicate the show uses a gunshot sound effect as well as theatrical haze and smoke, and children under four are not permitted in the theatre. Tickets can be purchased through Telecharge and official Broadway box office partners; as with any new Broadway musical, exact schedules and casting are subject to change as the season progresses.

Reporting compiled from Playbill, IBDB, BroadwayWorld, Broadway.com, TodayTix, TheaterMania, Stage and Cinema, The Shubert Organization, The Washington Post, Billboard, and Wikipedia. Broadway review coverage will be added following the production’s November 8, 2026 opening.