Broadway review by Adam Feldman
Just when you think you’ve figured out what Broadway is throwing at you, along comes a late-breaking curveball. Real Women Have Curves is the final show of the 2024–25 season, and it really is a ball: a joyful night of music and celebration. In many ways, this is a traditional Broadway musical—energetic, melodious, familiarly constructed—that honors traditional American values like loving your family, helping your community and working tirelessly to succeed as an entrepreneur. But since most of its characters are undocumented Latino immigrants to Los Angeles, Real Women is also, unexpectedly, the most relevant musical of the year.
Inspired by Josefina López's 1990 play and its 2002 film adaptation, Real Women Have Curves is set in 1987, well before the recent anti-immigrant scourge of ICE storms. Ana (Tatianna Córdoba) is a bright young woman who has been accepted to Columbia University, but is afraid to tell that to her mother, Carmen (Justina Machado); as a natural born American citizen, Ana plays an essential role in navigating the law on behalf of the dressmaking business that her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), has started with the family’s life savings. Although she is confident about her brains, Ana is less secure about her heavyset body, and Carmen isn’t encouraging on either account. (“You know what your problem is? You’re too smart,” she says. “This is why she don’t got no boyfriend. This and maybe ten…fifteen pounds.”)
Real Women Have Curves | Photograph: Courtesy Julieta Cervantes
The production, directed and choreographed with gusto by Sergio Trujillo, has fun with the old fashions of Estela’s ruffly 1980s sartorial creations, rendered with affection by costume designers Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young. It also takes pleasure in being an old-fashioned musical comedy. Real Women Have Curves owes a particularly strong debt to Hairspray: Ana is its headstrong Traci Turnblad, in both her plumpness and her burgeoning activism—confronting a local politician, visiting a friend at a detention center—while Carmen is the protectively discouraging mother. Mauricio Mendoza’s Raúl is the mild dad with whom Carmen shares a midlife-romance duet, and Mason Reeves is the adorkable boy who doesn’t judge Ana’s body, but the show isn’t interested in these adjunct men; it’s about big women learning to be proud to take up space. When the overheated seamstresses in Estela’s workshop strip down to their undies in the show’s title song, their newfound sense of freedom feels truly uplifting. (When I was there, it even prompted some spectators to rise from their seats in a midshow ovation.)
Real Women Have Curves | Photograph: Courtesy Julieta Cervantes
Sure, the show’s style is unapologetically expansive. But this is Broadway, where a broad broad can be broad. Lisa Loomer’s well-crafted script, written with Nell Benjamin and peppered with Spanglish, doesn’t try for innovative plot twists. Its focus is on delivering a conventional story in a satisfying way, and it succeeds by providing opportunities for its vivid cast to shine. Machado, who starred in the 2017 reboot of One Day at a Time, is especially wonderful, displaying a masterful command of audience dynamics. But all of the women in Estela’s factory—Aline Mayagoitia, Florencia Cuenca, Shelby Acosta, Carla Jimenez, Jennifer Sánchez and Sandra Valls—have endearing moments. And the accomplished score, by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, mixes musical theater and pop with appealing Mexican accents; its highlights include two comedic showpieces, “If I Were a Bird” and “Adios, Andrés,” that feel original and fresh.
In a time when immigrants are being actively dehumanized throughout the United States, Real Women Have Curves provides a vital counterpoint—partly by depicting the dreams and fears of immigrant workers in specific terms, but mostly just by being lovable. This show is a bona fide crowd pleaser: a warm hug that pulls you into its generous bosom. With a little luck, it could turn out to be a sleeper hit. Go now and get ahead of the curve.
Real Women Have Curves: The Musical. James Earl Jones Theatre (Broadway). Music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. Book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin. Directed by Sergio Trujillo. With Tatianna Córdoba, Justina Machado, Florencia Cuenca, Shelby Acosta, Carla Jimenez, Aline Mayagoitia, Mauricio Mendoza, Mason Reeves, Jennifer Sánchez, Sandra Valls. Running time: 2hrs 15mins. One intermission.
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Real Women Have Curves | Photograph: Courtesy Julieta Cervantes
