‘Real Women Have Curves’ Broadway Review: Latinas Take Cover to Break Free

Great novels and great movies rarely translate into great musicals, much less very good ones. When it comes to suitable source material, a second-rate book or film often makes a more successful transition to the stage. If a novel or a movie is classic, it fits the chosen medium to perfection. Adapting them to the stage automatically destroys what’s great.

In scene after scene, Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin’s book for the new musical “Real Women Have Curves” is a vast improvement on George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez’s screenplay, which is based on Lopez’s play. Where the 2002 film dawdles, the musical defines and drives with great narrative precision its timely tale of Latina immigrants who make dresses in a Los Angeles shop.

“Real Women Have Curves” opened Sunday at the James Earl Jones Theatre, and it’s obvious you’re in good hands under Sergio Trujillo’s expert direction when the show kicks off with not one but two What I Want songs. Even a darker-than-the-abyss musical like “Sweeney Todd” needs a What I Want song at the top. Sondheim’s demon barber wants revenge, so he sings “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.”

As soon as the curtain goes up on “Real Women,” the seamstresses let us know they want to work. It’s why they immigrated to the United States, and because they’re also proud of their dresses, they sing “Make It Work.”

Moments later, Ana (Tatianna Cordoba), the only Latina among them who’s a U.S. citizen, has secured a scholarship to Columbia University, and she wants to  be ”Flying Away.” Unfortunately for Ana, her sister (Florencia Cuenca) and mother (Justina Machado) run the dress factory and need her hands there, not across the country in New York City. The conflict comes fast and sharp, and these three very real women are off and running without ever taking a breath to look back.

We remember classic musicals by their composers, but the far more important creative talent is the unsung book writer. Great scores have been seriously diminished by problematic books, “Candide” and the recently revived “Floyd Collins” being two prime examples. Great books, on the other hand, can rescue second-rate scores.

Fortunately, Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s songs for “Real Women” are better than second-rate if, now and then, a little derivative. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before. No boundaries are pushed, but the tunes are foot-tapping and fit perfectly into the story. What’s annoying are the orchestrations (by Huerta, Velez, Nadia DiGiallonardo and Rich Mercurio). There’s a jangling TV- commercial quality to much of the music.

Indeed, “Adios Andres” looks to be the show’s big breakout hit, the perfect ad jingle for any menopause medication. In the film version, the mother’s mid-life pregnancy turns out to be the onset of menopause. It’s a dreary subplot that the stage musical handles both comically and efficiently in this one showstopper. It helps, too, that Justina Machado grounds the story with her unerring comic timing and strong maternal presence. The show is also smart to make this mother, and not the whole Mexican-American culture in L.A., the major roadblock to Ana’s going to Columbia.

Amid the comedy in the dress factory, “Real Women” keeps an eye on what’s going on beyond the proscenium arch. The staging of an immigration raid at the pillow factory next door is harrowing.

Despite a powerfully sung “”Flying Away,” Cordoba’s performance as Ana is a little unfocused — until she gets to dance with her love interest, Mason Reeves’ sweet Henry. Trujillo’s buoyant choreography provides the Cinderella moment that gives Cordoba shades of Tracy Turnblad from “Hairspray.” Reeves’ pixillated Prince Charming makes this transformation absolutely magical.

Unlike the movie version, Ana is now an intern at a local newspaper, and “Real Women” is one of the few current musicals or plays to treat the profession of journalism with any respect. Ana’s nascent reporter skills serve to defend the dressmakers from an evil wholesaler.

“Real Women” neatly bucks another theater trend here. The villain isn’t another white straight guy; instead, she’s a Latina in disguise. In other words, women of color have the right to be bad, too. Monica Tulia Ramirez plays this “pendeja” to perfect.

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