Real Women Have Curves

Stitching the Revolution One Seam at a Time

James Earl Jones Theatre

Let’s be clear: Real Women Have Curves: The Musical isn’t just a glow-up for a beloved play—it’s a defiant love letter sewn from sweat, stretch marks, Spanglish, and sisterhood. And it's about damn time Broadway looked like this.

Based on Josefina López’s OG play and the early-aughts cult film (raise your hand if America Ferrera’s monologue made you cry in your childhood bedroom), the new musical adaptation slaps some cumbia, pop, and brass onto the original chassis, and lets it sashay down the runway with hips first and head high.

Ana García (a magnetic Karen Rodriguez) is our anchor—a college-bound Chicana with big dreams and a bigger heart, torn between escaping her family’s East L.A. sewing shop and honoring the women who raised her. Cue tensions. Cue fabric flying. Cue intergenerational drama set to an irresistible beat.

This is not your average Broadway fairy tale. There’s no prince. No corset. No weight-loss montage. What we do get: a menopause number, a hot flash of sexual liberation, and an ensemble of women who strip down—not just physically (yes, there’s a scene that made the audience gasp and cheer at once), but emotionally.

And that’s the genius here: the musical dresses its radical politics in rhinestones and rhythm. It’s a Trojan horse in a push-up bra.

Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s score is a mixed but mostly magical bag. Bilingual bangers like “Aquí Estoy” and “Don’t Call Me Fat” hit hard, while some other tunes—yes, I’m looking at you, “The Lobster Song”—could’ve been cut and served elsewhere (preferably with drawn butter and less allegory). Still, when the music soars, it soars, and the harmonies between the factory women are nothing short of healing.

The direction (by Tony Award winner Sergio Trujillo, no less) is kinetic, keeping the sewing machines buzzing and the story pulsing. The stage transforms from sweatshop to dreamscape without losing the grit of real-life hustle. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set design traps us in fluorescent factory lighting before cracking open to reveal Ana’s skyward gaze. It’s a visual metaphor for every first-gen kid who’s ever tried to make room for their dreams without dismantling their roots.

Costumes by Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young deserve their own curtain call: think practicality meets power. Elastic waistbands. Cotton bras. Bold lipstick. The real uniform of resistance.

But let’s not romanticize it too much. The show’s not perfect. It runs a little long. Some of the emotional beats feel underdeveloped. And it occasionally leans too hard on “message” over momentum.

Still, Real Women Have Curves earns its standing ovation with its radical softness. It refuses to flatten the complexities of mother-daughter bonds, class, body image, and the myth of American upward mobility. It lets women be loud, flawed, funny, contradictory—and seen. Not for who they could become after some makeover, but for who they are right now.

Verdict:
This isn’t just musical theatre—it’s a community quilt, stitched with sweat, laughter, betrayal, and big-hearted joy. Feminist, fat-positive, and fantastically overdue. Broadway, more this please.