‘Wanted’: How the West Was Overwrought

Broadway audiences have by now grown accustomed to the “American Idol”-ization of musical theater, with gifted singers reducing songs to exercises in vocal gymnastics. You can hardly blame them, or the directors and coaches who no doubt encourage them. Nothing guarantees show-stopping applause these days more than a note held for more than ten seconds, or so distorted by histrionic melisma that the melody and lyric are all but lost. Granted, the use of ornamentation in singing has a long and glorious history in gospel and R&B, both of which figure into first-time Broadway composer Ross Baum’s score for “Wanted,” a new musical following two young black women who pass for white in late 19th-century Texas. But you don’t have to be a musicologist to tell the difference between soulful expression and showing off, or to simply know excess when you hear it, and “Wanted,” under Stevie Walker-Webb’s direction and Paul Byssainthe, Jr.’s music direction, revels in excess — and not just where the vocals are concerned. Librettist and lyricist Angelica Chéri, also a Broadway newbie, writes in her bio that “Wanted” is “inspired by ancestral family lore” about Martha and Mary Clarke, her great-great-aunts. “We knew that they passed, and we knew that they were outlaws,” Ms. Chéri told the New York Times in a recent interview. But tales told by various relatives were “deliciously incongruent,” she admitted: “It was hysterical. Which was another reason why it felt epic enough to become a musical, because it’s like nobody knows.” Ms. Chéri has used that creative license to craft a fable of oppression and empowerment that can seem both sanctimonious and silly. The show begins as Mary and Martha, respectively played by Solea Pfeiffer and Liisi LaFontaine, and their mother, Tallulah, portrayed by powerhouse R&B singer and songwriter Ledisi, are being denied land owed them by a plantation owner, one of several evil white men we’ll meet over two acts. One bad guy we only hear about is Mary and Martha’s father, who abandoned Tallulah when she was pregnant — after trying to do worse, we’ll soon learn — and is responsible for the light skin the sisters see as their ticket to finding justice. Discovering they have a talent for petty crime, the gals wind up crossing paths with a white bandit named Jesse, played by a properly smoldering Bradley Jaden. The stage directions indicate that Mary and Jesse “lock eyes through a puff of smoke. There’s instant electricity.” Martha, meanwhile, catches the eye of one of Jesse’s black staff members, a gentle soul named Elijah, sweetly played by Luke James. Elijah has a pair of sassier female colleagues, Sissy and Flo (Aurelia Williams and Awa Sel Secka, both loaded for bear) who serve mostly as comic relief — joking, for example, about how Jesse will react when Mary delivers a “choc’late baby.” In between scenes, performers representing the Clarkes’ ancestors provide context, commentary, and guidance, as a Greek chorus would, often through song. The singing, as I suggested earlier, basically takes two forms: belting and belting louder, with a little whispery crooning thrown in here and there for foreplay. The soloists are tasked most heavily, though not quite as much as the principal actors. Ms. Pfeiffer, who has brought a radiant voice to roles ranging from Maria in “West Side Story” to Eva Perón in “Evita,” and Ms. LaFontaine, no slouch herself, can sound like they’re competing to be heard, or to prove who can emote more fervidly. Ledisi fares better, which makes sense, since the neo-soul movement that helped launch her career emphasized nuance and discretion more than other R&B and pop music typically has over the past three or four decades.It would have been lovely to see a little more of that grace in “Wanted,” or in many contemporary musical productions that cater to crowds conditioned to expect and reward overkill. These extraordinarily talented singers deserve better. The only question, at this point, is whether we do.

‘Wanted’: How the West Was Overwrought

‘Wanted’: How the West Was Overwrought

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