Angelica Chéri’s family legend about her great-great aunts, Mary and Martha Clarke, has evolved over more than a decade from whispered stories around a kitchen table in Bakersfield, California, to a musical set to debut on Broadway this fall. The show, now titled “Wanted,” explores the lives of the biracial Clarke sisters, who lived in the American West in the late 19th century, blending fact with folklore about outlaws who challenged the racial and legal norms of their time.
Chéri, a playwright and lyricist, first encountered tales of the Clarke sisters while browsing old family photo albums as a child. Unlike other relatives, Mary and Martha appeared white in photographs, sparking rumors within the family that cast them as bank robbers, train thieves, or even killers. These stories, rich in contradiction and intrigue, inspired Chéri to create a musical chronicling their lives.
The project was initiated in 2014 while Chéri was enrolled in New York University’s Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program. She teamed up with composer Ross Baum to craft the first draft, despite having few concrete historical details beyond the sisters’ biracial heritage and outlaw status. The Clarke sisters were descendants of a French grandfather and an enslaved grandmother, but much of their story existed in flexible family lore.
The musical, initially titled “Gun & Powder,” premiered in January 2020 at the Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia, directed by Robert O’Hara. Centering on twins who rob whites to pay off their mother’s sharecropping debts, the production ran for nearly four weeks. After its closing, Chéri and Baum undertook significant revisions to deepen narrative elements and reshape the creative team. A second production followed in 2024 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, under the direction of Stevie Walker-Webb, who has since been brought back to helm the Broadway staging set to open at the James Earl Jones Theater on October 15.
Critical response to the Paper Mill production acknowledged the musical’s recasting of traditional American West myths into a “rollicking revenge fantasy,” emphasizing themes of racial identity and belonging. Despite positive reviews, the creators continued to refine the show, including changing its title to “Wanted” to better reflect its Western motif and avoid complications tied to the previous name.
“We wanted to strip it down to more of its essence,” Baum said of the newest iteration, which features the Kinfolk, an ancestral ensemble who serve as narrators and physical transformers of the stage environment. The production aims to heighten the emotional stakes of Mary and Martha’s struggle as Black women pursuing the American dream in 1893, a time when such aspirations came with peril.
The cast reunites Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine as Mary and Martha. Both actresses, who share the characters’ mixed-race heritage, have found the roles personally resonant, offering an intimate exploration of biracial identity rarely represented on stage in this historical context. Pfeiffer, who played Mary in the Signature Theater production, and LaFontaine, Martha at the Paper Mill Playhouse, have not previously performed together but are deeply invested in the show’s success.
Rounding out the ensemble are R&B artists Ledisi, portraying Tallulah Clarke, the sisters’ mother, and Luke James as Elijah, a formerly enslaved man and Martha’s love interest.
Chéri described the journey from family lore to Broadway as a profound transformation, one that challenges prevailing cultural narratives about America. “Bringing my family’s history to Broadway truly blows my mind,” she said, emphasizing the musical’s role in expanding the discourse on race and identity in American history and theater.