Real Women Have Curves Broadway Reviews

What buoys it is an extremely likable cast, riding the waves of a hummable score that sounds variously of Mexico, Broadway and American pop. (The music director is Roberto Sinha.) And it doesn’t hurt that the show has a luscious color palette, or that its version of a disco ball is shaped like a dressmaker’s mannequin. (The set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, lighting by Natasha Katz, video by Hana S. Kim and costumes by Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young.)

As for “Adios, Andrés”—a funny but genuinely sincere requiem for “Andrés…que viene cada mes” that pops up when Pancha informs Carmen “You got the menopause”—sure, it could easily be cut. But it’s light and fizzy, and it gives all the sewing factory employees a moment to bond over something other than ruffles and thread. It also hits hard with a large cross section of the audience: 40- and 50-something female theatergoers (we’re the ones fanning ourselves with our Playbills). A number that connects like that is a rarity, and RWHC has two—the other being the triumphant title song celebrating cellulite, stretch marks, loose skin, and the other everyday realities that women are taught to hide. Not surprisingly, it routinely earns a mid-show standing ovation—and not just from the women in the house.

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.

Working with a smallish stage (and two or three main sets), designer Arnulfo Maldonado and video designer Hana S. Kim provide us with as much color as possible. As for the costumes, by Wilberth Gonzalez and Tony Award winner Paloma Young, they are sometimes super-colorful as well (in the fancy dresses designed by Estella) but also suitably workaday for a group of women without much financial means. No matter. As “Real Women Have Curves” shows us again and again that what’s inside these women – determination, grit, compassion – is way important than what we can see with our eyes!

Unfortunately, there are too few other moments in Real Woman Have Curves that soar like that, that deliver the joy and delight of shaking off the many worries and fears that burden these eight women 24/7. Based on the same-named play and subsequent HBO movie, the musical set in 1987 focuses on the eight friends and coworkers who sew dresses in a small, hidden warehouse space, with all but one of the women – young Ana – undocumented. The Reagan era amnesty program, with its length-of-time requirements and insistence on records clean of even a driving ticket, seems to offer scant promise.

The evening’s high-wattage highlight is the title tune, an ode to body positivity prompted when Ana sheds her blouse in the overheated, fan-less factory as the team rushes to finish the big order. Soon she encourages the others to strip down to their skivvies as well, and we see these women work up hte nerve to peel off their layers of shame and self-consciousness to embrace their lived-in bodies just as they are. It’s a genuinely catchy tune, artfully staged with a mirror-tiled dress form overhead like a disco ball, and it carries a powerful message that rightly generated a standing ovation at the performance I attended. Real Women Have Curves tells a simple story with musicality, with humor, with authenticity, and with an embrace of its female characters as fully rounded, three-dimensional individuals. You know, with curves.

More importantly, despite the differences, the message remains the same. There is still a very clear sense that this is a story that sees each and every one of these women; that makes no apologies as it allows them to take up space; that demands its audience accept them, gives the room to accept themselves and always believes in their ability to grow. By the end of the show, the young Ana is indeed taking flight, but she is not soaring solo.

Real Women is best when allowing them to flesh out their relationships, through punchlines heartily landed, or when following Ana’s budding journalism career. Interviewing a local politician who’s quick to throw immigrants under the bus, she poignantly complains of how “everyone’s swinging right to keep up with Reagan.” It’s at her internship that she meets the adorable Henry (Mason Reeves), a fellow overachiever also planning on attending college on the East Coast. The pair’s first date gives the production its sole full-out dance number, choreographed by director Sergio Trujillo.

Though sure to please many audiences, the show’s ending also feels unearned and underwritten. Perhaps if only Carmen could fully realize that Ana’s future writing will create something special that honors not only her but all the women like Carmen who, with fortitude, resilience and passion, will always be there making it work.

Great novels and great movies rarely translate into great musicals, much less very good ones. When it comes to suitable source material, a second-rate book or film often makes a more successful transition to the stage. If a novel or a movie is classic, it fits the chosen medium to perfection. Adapting them to the stage automatically destroys what’s great. In scene after scene, Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin’s book for the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is a vast improvement on George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez’s screenplay, which is based on Lopez’s play. Where the 2002 film dawdles, the musical defines and drives with great narrative precision its timely tale of Latina immigrants who make dresses in a Los Angeles shop.

Trujillo, an old pro, understands his material and his lively choreography is both created for the bonafide dancers in the cast and designed to make everyone else look and feel good. So they do. There’s a song about menopause that went over like gangbusters at the show I saw, determined ballads of hopes, fears and resilience and even a bit of PG semi-nudity when the factory gets too sweaty and confidence rises. The curves promised on the marquee are vivaciously delivered.

The new musical Real Women Have Curves is, on the whole, a vibrant, exuberant affair, soaked in the pink and gold of L.A. sunsets, with painterly projections of tropical blossoms regularly unfurling across its proscenium in such verdant profusion you can practically smell their perfume. Yet surrounded by all this lushness, the show’s darkest, grayest moments are some of its most striking.

As “Real Women” was celebrated in its earlier incarnations for promoting body positivity, the musical’s title song becomes a showcase both for the plump, pretty Ana’s comfort with her weight and for the different shapes and sizes of the company members as they strip to their undergarments. Their enthusiasm — captured with palpable affection by director/choreographer Sergio Trujillo, who serves the material as well as possible — was, at the preview I attended, received with a standing ovation.

Broadway audiences might not immediately sense it from this vibrant new musical, but this year marks the 35th anniversary of Real Women Have Curves. Each iteration of Josefina López's groundbreaking script has gloriously championed body positivity, the vital contributions of immigrants who power the U.S., and the undeniable strength of Latina camaraderie. Following López's original 1990 play and the popular 2002 HBO film adaptation, the musical premiering at the James Earl Jones Theatre, with music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a culturally resonant book by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin, reimagines López's enduring drama through dynamic songs, an expanded diversity of identities, and stunning visual storytelling. It is a joyful, triumphant, authentic celebration of Latinidad, resilience and representation. Especially given its deep theatrical roots, the show seems poised to become the next definitive Latinx musical, an In The Heights for a new generation.

“Real Women Have Curves,” which has opened tonight at James Earl Jones Theater, marks choreographer Sergio Trujillo’s Broadway directorial debut. If it has a predictable plot, it’s all these women together, and the proud characters they portray in the show, that make it work. “Make It Work” is the title of the first of twenty tuneful and rhythmic musical numbers in the show, and the guiding principle of its characters. They see the broken fan, or the shortage of thread, or their fear of la migra, as just obstacles to work around: “If you prick your finger…make sure the fabric’s red/When something breaks/Make it work instead.”