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A brief scene in the new musical \u201cReal Women Have Curves<\/a>\u201d is as harrowing as anything in the most serious drama on Broadway: a group of terrified workers in a small Los Angeles dress factory, hiding in the dark as they listen to an immigration raid taking place next door.<\/p>\n When the raid is over, the first sounds to break the quiet are soft weeping and breath laden with fear.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a jolt of somber realism in a show that opts, ultimately, to lean in a feel-good direction. Yet such is the balancing act of \u201cReal Women Have Curves,\u201d which opened on Sunday night at the James Earl Jones Theater.<\/p>\n Based on Josefina L\u00f3pez\u2019s play<\/a> of the same name, and on the 2002 HBO film adaptation<\/a> starring America Ferrera, it is a bouncy, crowd-pleasing comedy about female empowerment, self-acceptance and chasing one\u2019s ambitions. It is also a tale of immigrant life in this country, and the dread woven into the fabric of daily existence for undocumented people and those closest to them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At 18, newly graduated from high school, Ana Garc\u00eda (Tatianna C\u00f3rdoba) is the only American citizen in her family, and the only one with legal status. An aspiring journalist, and the daughter of immigrants who came to California from Mexico, she is spending the summer of 1987 doing an unpaid internship at a neighborhood newspaper.<\/p>\n Then the dress factory owned by her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), receives a huge order that needs to be turned around fast. Their fireball of a mother, Carmen (Justina Machado), ropes Ana in to work there, too.<\/p>\n \u201cSo instead of getting paid nothing by strangers, you can get paid nothing by your family,\u201d says Carmen, who is also part of the sewing crew there. \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n C\u00f3rdoba, in her Broadway debut, is an appealing Ana, but Machado \u2014 best known for the Netflix reboot of \u201cOne Day at a Time<\/a>\u201d \u2014 is an astonishment as Carmen, essentially slipping the audience into her pocket the instant she walks onstage. In a charismatic comic performance, the radiant Machado makes utter emotional sense of Carmen\u2019s swirl of contradictions, including the contempt for Ana\u2019s weight that spikes her boundless well of love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Carmen wants her family to be together, safe. For the Garc\u00edas \u2014 including Ra\u00fal (Mauricio Mendoza), who as husband and father gets to play good cop more often than Carmen does \u2014 an important part of that is having Ana to serve as an envoy in situations where the others\u2019 undocumented status leaves them vulnerable: paying taxes, dealing with a landlord.<\/p>\n You can see why Ana is scared to tell her parents that Columbia University, on the other side of the country, has offered her a full scholarship. They don\u2019t even know she applied.<\/p>\n At her newspaper gig, which she juggles with the factory job, she does tell her fellow intern, Henry (Mason Reeves), with whom she tumbles into a cutely geeky romance. He loves that she\u2019s so skillful at reporting, and he declines to indulge her self-deprecation about her curviness. Bonus: these two earnest brainiacs can dance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, with music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a book by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin, this production is much tighter than the 2023 version audiences saw in its world premiere<\/a> at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the first act, the braiding of plot strands is smooth, with comedy (some charming, some cheesy) gracefully coexisting with gut-gripping drama. But after a bleak start to Act II, the show opts for upbeat the rest of the way. On the one hand, that means some fun musical numbers, as when the women at the factory strip down to their undies, and deliver rap solos, during the body-positive title song. On the other, substance yields to banalities, leaving the show feeling somewhat empty.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t hurt that the show has a luscious color palette, or that its version of a disco ball is shaped like a dressmaker\u2019s mannequin. (The set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, lighting by Natasha Katz, video by Hana S. Kim and costumes by Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young.)<\/p>\n At Estela\u2019s factory, each employee makes a distinct impression \u2014 particularly Pancha (Carla Jimenez), peppering the place with wisecracks. Mostly they\u2019re in English, but when Estela accepts that giant order and promises to have it ready in a mere three weeks, you don\u2019t need to know Spanish to understand Pancha\u2019s response: \u201cEst\u00e1s completamente loca?\u201d You can read the meaning in her incredulous face.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The worker who swoops in and steals our hearts, though, is Itzel (Aline Mayagoitia), a 19-year-old woman newly arrived from Guatemala, who is the most petrified at hearing the Immigration and Naturalization Service raid next door. Afterward, up on the roof with Ana, Itzel is wise, determined and funny in an offbeat way. When they sing of freedom in \u201cIf I Were a Bird<\/a>,\u201d one of the show\u2019s most playful songs, they dance together with childlike abandon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And when, sometime later, Itzel is rounded up for deportation, the force of the plot twist is only intensified by our own awareness of recent headlines about the hardening of U.S. immigration policy.<\/p>\n One of the strangest things about seeing \u201cReal Women\u201d in this moment is the distance between the United States as it is now and as it was in 1987. During the second term of President Ronald Reagan, the country offered amnesty<\/a> to certain undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n That policy is a significant plot element; in the show, amnesty has just become available. Ana encourages her colleagues at the factory to apply. Her sister is ineligible, though, because of a minor scrape with the law when she was 15. In Estela\u2019s song \u201cDaydream,\u201d we see how squelched her prospects are because of her immigration status, and what she would try to do with her dress-designing talent if she were not so circumscribed.<\/p>\n Still, the creators of \u201cReal Women\u201d are playing by Shakespeare rules: This is a comedy, and it will have a happy ending. Resilience and resourcefulness will factor in. Love and liberty will triumph. Ana will head east.<\/p>\n Carmen asks: \u201cWhat kind of daughter leaves her family?\u201d<\/p>\n The kind who\u2019s going after an American dream. Just like her mom did, when she came from Mexico.<\/p>\n Real Women Have Curves<\/strong>
At the James Earl Jones Theater, Manhattan; realwomenhavecurvesbroadway.com<\/a>. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n