‘Real Women Have Curves’ Review: This American (Immigrant) Life

A letter scene in the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is as heartbreaking as anything in the most serious Broadway drama: a group of terrified workers in a small clothing factory in Los Angeles, hidden in the dark while listening to a place of immigration incursion below.

When the raid ends, the first sounds that break the silence are soft tires and charge of breath with fear.

It is a shaking or somber realism in a show that ultimately opts, to lean in an direction of feeling good. However, such is the equilibrium act of “Real Women Have Curves”, which opened Sunday night at the James Earl Jones theater.

Based on the work of the same name of Josefina López, and in the film adaptation of HBO 2002 starring América Ferrera, it is an inflatable and pleasant comedy about female empowerment, self -acceptance and persecution of one’s ambitions. It is also a history of the life of immigrants in this country, and the intention of interwoven in the fabric of daily existence for undocumented people and those closest to them.

At 18, recently graduated from high school, Ana García (Tatianna Córdoba) is the only American citizen in her family and the only one with legal status. An aspiring journalist and daughter of immigrants who arrived in California from Mexico, is spending the summer of 1987 making an unpaid internship in a newspaper in the neighborhood.

Then, the clothing factory owned by his older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca), receives a great order that must be turned quickly. His fireball of a mother, Carmen (Justina Machado), the strings and also work there.

“Then, instead of receiving anything for strangers, you can’t receive anything from your family,” says Carmen, who is also part of the sewing team there. “You are welcome.”

Córdoba, in his Broadway debut, is an attractive ana, but crushed, better known for the Netflix restart of “One Day at A Time”, is an amazement like Carmen, essentially sliding to the audience in his pocket the moment on stage. In a charismatic comic action, Radiant Machado has a total emotional sensation of Carmen’s contradictions, including the contempt for Ana’s weight that increases her unlimited well of love.

Carmen wants her family to be together, safe. For the Garcías, including Raúl (Mauricio Mendoza), who, as a husband and father, play with the good police more frequently than Carmen, an important part of that is to have ana to serve as sent in situations where the status status status status status status status status.

You can see why Ana is afraid to tell her parents that Columbia University, on the other side of the country, has offered her a complete scholarship. They don’t know that she requested.

In his concert in the newspaper, he juggled with the factory work, he tells his passing partner, Henry (Mason Reeves), with whom he falls into a well Geek romance. She loves that she is so skilled to inform, and he refuses to please her self -procurement about her curve. Bonus: These two sincere brains can dance.

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 a lot that the 2023 audience version Audiences, Attance Attory.

In the first act, the braid of the plot threads is soft, with a comedy (some charming, some cheesy) coexisting with drama that hastened the guts. But after a shady beginning to Act II, the show opts for optimism the rest of the road. On the one hand, that means a fun musical number, such as when women in the factory are reduced to their underpants and deliver rap alone, they last the song of the positive title for the body. On the other hand, the substance produces banalitions, letting the program feel something empty.

What Boya is an extremely pleasant cast, that mounts the waves of a hummable score that sounds like a variety of Mexico, American Broadway and pop. (The musical director is Roberto Sinha.) And it is no more than the program of a delicious color palette, or that his version of a disco ball has a dressmaker’s mannequin. (The set is from Arnulfo Maldonado, Natasha Katz lighting, Video by Hana S. Kim and costumes of Wilberth González and Paloma Young.)

In the Estela factory, each employee causes a clear impression, partularly Pancha (Carla Jiménez), which splashes the place with jokes. They are mainly in English, but when Estela accepts that giant request and promises to have it ready in just three weeks, he does not need to know Spanish to understand Pancha’s response: “Are you completing crazy?” You can read the meaning on your incredulous face.

The worker who approaches and steals our hearts, he thought, is Itzel (Aline Mayagoitia), a 19 -year -old woman who arrived from Guatemala, who is more petrified in listening to the incursion of immigration and the naturalization service. Then, on the roof with Ana, Itzel is wise, determined and fun in an unconventional way. When they sing from La Libertad in “If i were a Bird”, one of the most playful songs in stores, they dance along with childhood abandonment.

And when, at some point later, Itzel is rounded for deportation, the strength of the plot’s turn is only intensified by our own conscience or recently holders about the hardening of the American immigration policy.

One of the strangest things to see “real women” at this time, the distance between the United States as it is now and as it was in 1987. Duration of President Ronald Reagan, the country offered amnesty to certain undocumented immigrants.

That policy is a significant weft element; In the program, the amnesty has just been available. Ana encourages her colleagues in the factory to run. His sister is intelligible, he thought, because or a minor scraping with the law when he was 15 years old. In the song of Estela “Daydream”, wee of how silenced their perspectives are because either its state of immigration, and what would warm up to make doet be circumscribed.

Even so, the creators of “Real Women” are playing Shakespeare Rules: this is a comedy, and will have a happy ending. Resilience and ingenuity will factor. Love and freedom will succeed. Ana will go to the east.

Carmen asks: “What girl or daughter leaves her family?”

The boy who goes after an American dream. Like his mother, when he came from Mexico.

Royal women have curves
At the James Earl Jones theater, Manhattan; Realwomenhacurvesbroadway.com. Execution time: 2 hours 20 minutes.