NEW YORK — “My husband likes a big woman,” says one of the characters in “Real Women Have Curves: The Musical,” enough to spark a roar from a matinee audience. “More territory to explore.”
“My husband likes a short woman,” comes the fast response from a fellow worker. “You get to the destination faster.”
Sexy quips like that are sprinkled throughout this affirmative musical about Latina garment workers in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1987, a new Broadway attraction based on both Josefina López’s original play and the 2002 film adaptation that starred America Ferrera. Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, it’s a modestly scaled melodrama about the experience of mostly undocumented and hard-working immigrants and, although theoretically set nearly 40 years ago in the late 1980s, it has arrived at the James Earl Jones Theatre with striking timeliness.
The show, which has a score by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a book by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin, wisely leans into that circumstance. The cultural touchstones of the 1980s aren’t exactly dominant here and until someone mentions Ronald Reagan, I swear most audience members thought they were watching a show set, sad to say, in the present.
The title of the piece, a value statement, signals the show’s point of view, and that there will be support and community and determination and body positivity aplenty. That’s exactly how it goes.
The plot is straight melodrama and derivative of several recent musicals, from “In the Heights” to “The Full Monty,” but especially “Kinky Boots.” Carmen (Justina Machado), a Mexican immigrant who has opened her own garment factory, gets an order from a mean, pencil-skirted buyer named Rosalí (Jennifer Sánchez) to sew hundreds of dresses on a ridiculously tight deadline. If she doesn’t make it, she won’t get paid (you suspect she just might find a way before the end of Act 2). That’s one source of dramatic tension, especially since the factory also has to worry about immigration raids and workers disappearing.
The other big conflict flows between Carmen and her daughter, Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), an 18-year-old with Big Dreams, including an acceptance with a scholarship letter from Columbia University, allowing her to pursue her goal of becoming a journalist (still a viable career ambition in 1987). Ana’s gentle dad (Mauricio Mendoza) is cool, her sister (Florencia Cluenca) is ready to step up at the shop and Ana’s boyfriend (Mason Reeves) is geeky-cute and supportive (the show is no font of machismo), but mom Carmen wants her kid to stay and help with the garment biz. Ana is torn between her familial responsibilities and her own desires. You think she may figure out how to manage both before the final bows?
The book for “Real Women” really does tie itself into a pretzel trying to achieve its goal of keeping Carmen a likable character with whom the audience can empathize (the enemies here are the evil capitalists who forget where they came from, along with the immigration authorities) while also creating conflict with her daughter who just wants to go to any Ivy League college on a full scholarship. Certainly, children of immigrants feel much pressure due to their parents’ prior struggles and those first-generation Americans often count family loyalty above all, but they also typically prize education and Carmen’s lack of support for college for a whip-smart daughter the show insists she adores is just very hard to believe. Machado does her best to make it work and the personalized passion with which the talented Córdoba approaches her standard-issue, let-me-at-’em 18-year-old is enough to lift the character, especially in front of an audience willing to let her stand on their collective shoulders.
This show, which has a genial, populist score of entertaining and empowering numbers, is not really about that plot anyway. Everyone who has ever seen a musical knows where it is going. It’s more about the collective journey, the chance to celebrate oft-overlooked garment workers who know of skill and artistry and to enjoy actors with panache (Aline Mayagoitia, a very notable talent, is notably moving as a Guatemalan refugee). Most of the company is celebrating a Broadway debut and the audience is primed to enjoy their triumph, fictionally and formatively.
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.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
At the James Earl Jones Theatre, 138 W. 48th St., New York; www.realwomenhavecurvesbroadway.com
