Amid all the celebrity hype on Broadway this season, Real Women Have Curves arrives with an outstanding cast of mostly unknowns, as incomparable as they are unlikely to star in a major Broadway musical. They are performing their hearts out in a production that is all heart. It is also funny, touching, tuneful and refreshingly original packed with a timely message. Put it all together and you have one spicy Mexican feast of a show – as savory as a hot tamale, smooth as flan and irresistibly tasty as a deep-fried churro.
Real Women Have Curves started out as a play by Josefina Lopez 35 years ago. A film followed in 2002 and now it’s been adapted into a big budget musical that premiered a year and a half ago at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. The months in development gave it time to marinate; and the result is a wonderfully entertaining production that doesn’t seem to miss a beat. Director/choreographer Sergio Trujillo leads the collaborative effort which looks, sounds and feels highly polished yet is so relatably honest, the audience is able to connect in the most visceral way.
The book by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin is an improvement on the screenplay. It’s set in 1987 and tells the story of Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), a young Mexican woman in a working class family barely making ends meet. They’re all undocumented except for Ana who was born in the states. She’s a bright 18 year old who’s just graduated from high school in a Los Angeles immigrant community and dreams of becoming a writer. She’s reluctant to tell her family that she’s just been accepted to Columbia University on a full scholarship because they are counting on her to work in her sister Estela’s (Florencia Cuenca) dress-making business.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Ana ends up working two jobs over the summer: as a dressmaker with Estela and their mother Carmen (the sensational Justina Machado), and as an intern at a local newspaper where she falls for a fellow intern Henry (Mason Reeves).
Pressure mounts for Ana to give up her scholarship and stay in LA when Estela is given an order to make 200 dresses in just three weeks. A seemingly impossible task…and worse, the unyielding buyer makes clear that if the work is not completed in time, Estela will have to forfeit payment. As an undocumented Mexican woman, Estela is helpless to argue. She and the handful of women in the dress factory live in constant fear of INS agents who are often heard conducting deportation raids throughout the neighborhood.
It sounds heavy but the creatives have found just the right balance, revealing the migrants to be upbeat and optimistic despite the myriad obstacles they encounter every day. The show opens with a rousing number in the sweatshop factory “Make It Work” as the women introduce themselves going through the motions of the daily grind. Composers Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez have written some terrific numbers that cleverly advance the storyline with Latin-infused melodies and witty lyrics. When, for example, have you ever heard a song about menopause (“Adios Andres”)? It’s quite a winner, topped only by the joyously liberating title song “Real Women Have Curves” in which the workers, suffering the sweltering heat, whip off their tops – one by one. Let’s not forget this is a show populated by real looking women, not your usual svelte bodies; and by this point in the second act, the characters have become so endearingly real to us, when they expose themselves, singing and dancing with seeming abandon in their bras and underthings, it’s a show-stopping moment that has the audience cheering and leaping to their feet.
About those actors…many in the company are making their Broadway debuts. Chief among them – Córdoba as Ana. She has the voice, the moves and the presence of a bonafide star. Equally impressive is Cuenca as Estela who proudly writes in the Playbill that she’s “the first Mexican immigrant to originate a co-leading role in a Broadway musical.” Bravos as well to Carla Jimenez and Sandra Valls – Broadway first-timers playing factory ladies with welcome gobs of well-timed humor. And Aline Mayagoitia as Itzel is genuinely heartbreaking when she sings of her dream to fly from the strictures of her immigrant status.
Shelby Acosta and Jennifer Sanchez fill out the factory workforce with flair to spare. And among the male cast members, Reeves supplies romantic charm as Ana’s sweetly naive boyfriend Henry. Whoever came up with his final move in the bedroom scene deserves a shoutout. There is an embarrassment of riches in the show’s talent pool and I do wish Mauricio Mendoza, exuding warmth and empathy as Ana’s father, had more to do.
But it’s Machado, best known from her TV roles, who knocks us out with her high-octane performance. A study in extremes, her Carmen embodies the full spectrum of Latina motherhood – a loving, fat-shaming, self-sacrificing, hard-working woman who lives to survive day to day. She’s the whole package and you can’t help but love her for all of it.
More praise to the technical team led by Arnulfo Maldonado’s settings splashed with gorgeous watercolor backdrops contrasting the LA landscape with the characters’ tropical homelands. It’s all enhanced by Natasha Katz’s lights, and costumes by Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young who had a field day in a glorious dream sequence highlighted by dresses floating down from the rafters.
It’s all in the service of a story about women discovering how to be comfortable in their own skin while living in a world that’s constantly judging them by their skin. Too fat, too dark, too old! It’s an important message that Trujillo and company deliver quite beautifully.
In the end, we’re left with the recognition that these foreign born characters represent the majority of migrants seeking refuge in this country. All they want is a decent life, free of the violence and poverty they left behind. And yet, more and more, they face challenges that make it nearly impossible to survive, let alone afford a decent life for their families. As the characters talk about feeling powerless, the audience is touched in a way that no other medium can do. The best works don’t just entertain us, they move our hearts and minds. This is the power of great theater.
Real Women Have Curves opened April 27, 2025 at the James Earl Jones Theatre. Tickets and information: realwomenhavecurvesbroadway.com
