Both Cynical and Sentimental, ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Lands on Broadway

Is it possible for a show to be cynical and sentimental at the same time? It’s a question that has been posed by numerous Broadway productions in recent years, prominent among them jukebox musicals and film adaptations that have wrapped familiar songs or brands in shiny new boxes, often accompanied by messages that aim to be admirable or, pardon the tired cliché, empowering.Yet seldom has this approach been adopted more obviously or aggressively than it is in “Real Women Have Curves,” the new musical based on Josefina López’s play of the same name and the HBO film it inspired, co-written by Ms. López and George LaVoo. The play, which had its premiere in 1990, follows a group of Latina immigrants working at a Los Angeles sewing factory, among them a young woman named Ana, who yearns to go to New York for college.For the movie, released in 2002, some other characters were introduced, among them a high school teacher who encourages Ana, one of his graduating students, to pursue her dreams — even though, as in the play, Ana’s mother, Carmen, wants her to remain at home and work at the factory, which is owned by her older sister, Estela. The teacher doesn’t turn up in the musical, which features a book by playwright Lisa Loomer, working with Nell Benjamin, whose credits include more adroit stage adaptations of “Mean Girls” and “Legally Blonde.” But other characters from the play and film do, along with some new ones — including women from Guatemala and El Salvador, neither of them documented.The company of ‘Real Women Have Curves.’ Julieta CervantesIn the musical, in fact, Ana is the only U.S. citizen both in her family and among the factory workers, at a time when a Reagan-era amnesty program offered opportunities even as struggles endured. The young heroine thus shoulders a pressing responsibility, one that is reinforced by Carmen, who insists that her younger daughter keep contributing to Estela’s business after Ana has landed an internship at a local newspaper.Ana is predictably resentful, but as played by a bright-voiced Tatianna Córdoba in a winning Broadway debut, she projects neither privilege nor self-pity as she juggles shifts at the factory, where Carmen also works, with carrying out assignments for the East Side Beat. One of the latter tasks her with interviewing a stuffy politician, who tells the teenager their community “has always had to fight for resources, young lady. And now with this recent influx of immigrants, we’re more strained than ever.”When Ana challenges the obvious villain, noting that theirs has always been an immigrant community, he responds, “Heck, my own grandparents were immigrants,” but then adds, pointedly, “Hardworking legal immigrants.”Later, after the Guatemalan woman, Itzel, a young refugee sweetly played by Aline Mayagoitia, ends up at a detention center, we meet an even more darkly cartoonish immigration officer: When a visiting Ana asks if Itzel will be at the center the next day, he sneers, “Her or someone just like her. You all smell the same to me.”It’s specified in the script that both bad guys are white, while Henry, a fellow intern at the paper who takes a romantic interest in Ana — played by an immensely endearing Mason Reeves — is required to be “African-American.” Then there’s Mrs. Wright, a hard-hearted businesswoman who makes impossible demands on Estela, described as “Latina but passing beautifully” and portrayed by an impeccably snooty, stylish Claudia Mulet.There are unflattering and simplistic portraits of other Latin characters, particularly Carmen, who while belittling her daughters whines about the sacrifices she has made since leaving Mexico, giving Justina Machado, a stage and screen veteran, little opportunity to use the warmth and wit she has brought to other projects. In one of the more ludicrous numbers provided by composer/lyricists Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, whose songs are generally competent but seldom memorable, Carmen uses a Spanish euphemism — the language is cannily sprinkled in throughout the show — to confront the onset of menopause: “My youth may be dying/And my panocha is drying,” she sings in “Adios Andres.”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.The production offers other crowd-pleasing elements, notable among them Arnulfo Maldonado’s typically vibrant set design. During the course of its roughly two hours, though, this real woman, at least, felt more patronized than entertained.

Both Cynical and Sentimental, ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Lands on Broadway

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