REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES: A Charming New Musical — Review

A perfectly charming, if puzzlingly titled, new musical, Real Women Have Curves counts upon a winning ensemble of nearly all women performers portraying a believably tight-knit community. Based on Josefina López’s 1990 play, and on the HBO screenplay she later co-wrote with George LaVoo, it follows a group of Central American women, some undocumented, who work at a garment factory in 1987 Los Angeles.

The book, by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin, highlights the trio of women, the Garcías, at the factory’s core: its owner Estela (Florencia Cuenca), who dreams of designs more unique than the dresses she produces; and her sister Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), a recent high school grad with big career ambitions and a Columbia University acceptance letter she’s hiding from their mother, Carmen (Justina Machado), whose tough love, hardened from building a ground-up life in the US, would not take kindly to one of her own moving cross-country.

Nevermind that many of the Garcías’ legal papers, including the factory lease, are under Ana’s name. More than the body positivity its title implies, Real Women zeroes in on the duress faced by immigrants, especially women, and the camaraderie on which they rely. The score, by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, provides them several up-beat numbers to joyfully expound on this, including an early number introducing Ana to the syncopated rhythm of sewing machine work.

Despite juggling an (unpaid, as Carmen often notes) summer internship at a local newspaper, Ana’s been roped into factory work after Estela lands a tenuous deal with a buyer who’s known for not paying if her mercurial demands are not met. Needing to produce 200 dresses in three weeks, it’s all hands on deck. The intensity of that amount (me knowing nothing, is 200 a lot?) is driven home by their constant shock at the figure, if slightly betrayed by the expansiveness of the ensemble, and of Arnulfo Mandonado’s nicely rendered factory set. (Minimal projections, by Hana S. Kim, expand the action, including to a fanciful Paris Fashion Week fantasy.) 

As for the body positivity, it feels shoe-horned, though mercifully not too much. But, while hiding out from an INS raid at a neighboring plant, curvy Ana tells a co-worker that boys don’t tend to look at her, despite all the full-bodied women downstairs constantly reveling in the evergreen chisme their fruitful sex lives generate. If there’s a generational point to be made here, that body image might be something conquered with age, it’s not clearly mined, though a comedic ode to menopause (“Adios Andres”) is one of the second act’s highlights, with the older women bonding over their relationship to their womanhood.

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.

Cordoba, with her sweet, expressive face, is the kind of ingenue who’s easy to root for, and builds easy rapport with her family, chosen and biological. The musical trusts her to deliver, and she more than heartily rises to that challenge. Thankfully, despite some tonal flaws, so do these women. 

Real Women Have Curves is in performance at the James Earl Jones Theatre on West 48th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.