Four Decades, Three Versions, but Only One Real Women Have Curves

This is not a “thumbs up, thumbs down” review of a Broadway musical. It is a comparison of the play, movie, and musical all named Real Women Have Curves, which began as a play by Josefina López in 1987, adapted into a movie in 2002, and finally transformed into a Broadway musical with a new creative team in 2025.

Lisa Loomer, who wrote the book (with Nell Benjamin) for the musical set in 1987 Boyle Heights barrio of Los Angeles said, “the movie is quite different from the play, and the musical is quite different from both of them, but they have the same DNA.” Or to quote Gertrude Stein, “a rose is a rose, is a rose”—a thing is what it is.

I taught this play for nearly thirty years at the University of California. I was attracted to Josefina López’s work because of her unique Mexican humor and sensibility that reminded me of my own female relatives. I recall my mother, Helen, playing cards with my Tía Hortencia and primas, cracking jokes and telling stories in El Paso, Texas. I was looking for works by Latina authors to share with my students, especially female students of all races, who related to the women working in a Los Angeles sewing factory. Ironies abound—they sew dresses they will never wear because they cannot fit into size one or two or afford the markups to the very product they are making. They also talk about cellulite, menopause, and their tormentos—men who make their life hard. The final message is very “Chicano theatre”: Women have to organize and assume control of the means of production by starting their own business and taking charge of their destines.

Part of my family is from San Luis Potosi, Mexico where Josefina López was born in 1969. She and her family migrated to the United States and settled in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. Josefina was undocumented for thirteen years before she received amnesty in 1987 and eventually became a United States citizen in 1995.

A scene in the movie where Ana walks by Broadway’s Theatre Row foreshadowed what was to come. Over twenty years later—and nearly forty years since the play premiered—on 27 April of this year, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical got its world premiere at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway.

As an aspiring playwright wandering Theatre Row in 1988, López had a dramaturgical “plan” to see one of her shows on Broadway. It was her first stint in New York City, and she was selected to take part in the Hispanic Playwrights Workshop at INTAR led by María Irene Fornés, where the first draft of Real Women Have Curves was written.

Inspired by Luis Valdez’s El Teatro Campesino (ETC), López got an MFA in screenwriting from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her goal was to write plays for Latinas who she felt were missing in much of Valdez’s work. Valdez’s Zoot Suit, which had its own Broadway run in 1979, closed after one month and devastating reviews. Besides inspiration from ETC, of which stylistic elements appear in Real Women, she received advice from Fornés, as well as Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido whose playwriting workshop she took in San Francisco. The rewrites led to the world premiere of the play by the El Teatro de la Esperanza, directed by Hector Correa. From there the show had nearly 130 productions all over the country.

In 1990 Warner Brothers optioned the play, with López as the screenwriter, which led to her membership in the Writers Guild of America (WGA)—but it was not greenlit. In 1998 George Lavoro saw the play and helped her adapt it into a movie, which got a green light by HBO with Colombian-born Patricia Cardosa as the director. Lupe Ontiveros was cast as the mother, Carmen, with eighteen-year-old America Ferrera as Ana. Sundance Film Festival selected the film for the Dramatic Competition, and the film was released in 2002, where Ferrera and Ontiveros won the Audience and Jury Awards for Acting. A scene in the movie where Ana walks by Broadway’s Theatre Row foreshadowed what was to come. Over twenty years later—and nearly forty years since the play premiered—on 27 April of this year, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical got its world premiere at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway.

Who could imagine that the storyline set in 1987 would become so relevant in Trump’s brutal 2025 crackdown of immigrant America?

The play featured five women but no men, who were only talked about, often in a negative way. The Broadway musical grew to an ensemble cast of eight women, including several new female characters. Loomer was asked to add more women (Prima Flaco and Prima Fulvia) so they would have a “fuller cast for the musical.” She told me she liked the idea of creating “a Butch woman working in an ultra-feminine environment making quinceañera dresses and commenting how the ruffles make me seasick.”

Another new player is Itzel, the Guatemalan Indigenous woman who is detained by the “Migra” at a bus stop and deported—a harbinger of the massive Central American immigration coming to the United States. Loomer said it was her idea to “fuel Ana’s journey as a budding activist because Ana learns about courage and resilience from Itzel.” Who could imagine that the storyline set in 1987 would become so relevant in Trump’s brutal 2025 crackdown of immigrant America?

The women in the musical are much more complicated: There’s a “Mrs. Wright,” the buyer who wants to purchase the dresses Estela needs to make by a certain date or she won’t pay her a penny. There’s a dramatic turn when we discover she is also a Latina who is very successful and runs her own business but loses her humanity in the process. Ana helps her sister, Estela, who runs the sewing shop, confront Mrs. Wright, who then grows to acknowledge Estela’s marketable sense of fashion design. This ends in a business deal that empowers the feminine.

The major crux of all three versions is the relationship with Ana and her mother. In the movie, famed actress Lupe Ontiveros played Carmen as an antagonist who fought her daughter tooth and nail, saying “no” to university in New York and “yes” Ana to staying in Boyle Heights helping her family by working in a sweltering sewing factory.

The mother-daughter conflict in the musical is much more nuanced, and the portrayal of Carmen by Justina Machado explores the love/hate dynamic in a deeply moving duet. Ultimately it results in a fulfilling moment at the end when Carmen finally “blesses” her daughter and approves her move to New York.

The movie features four very positive men: a doting Abuelo, a supportive Padre, an aggressive teacher played by comedian George López who pushed Ana into applying for grad school, and a nerdy White boyfriend with whom Ana had her first sexual experience. I felt the four men in the movie were way over the top, but López said it was a marketing strategy geared towards “selling” the movie to men.

The masculine in the Broadway musical is a mixed lot: the sympathetic, almost saintly Father, the obnoxious politician Ed Wilson, a racist immigration officer, and a nerdy love interest. The father has taken over the role Abuelo occupied in the film, but the teacher has been eliminated. The boldest addition is the boyfriend, Henry—who is Black—a fellow intern for the local newspaper at a time when journalists still wrote on typewriters.

I wondered why the interracial dimension wasn’t explored more and whether a traditional Mexican family in Boyle Heights wouldn’t question the relationship. In early drafts, Lisa Loomer did develop the interracial theme, but “when I wrote racist reactions to Ana having an Afro-American boyfriend, the creative team decided it was not serving the musical.” López said the creative team wanted an African American character but were dead set against making Ana’s parents “unsympathetic and downplayed the racial issue between Blacks and Latinos.” In other words, it’s a Broadway musical.

The White politician, Ed Wilson, only has one scene in the musical, and is portrayed as a one-dimensional villain much like the immigration officer who remarks, “you all smell the same to me.” Ironically, both of these white characters were played by a Latino actor. The New Yorker critic commented that it “flattens several characters into hardworking brown heroines or callous white villains.” To be fair, there is another white character, a newspaper editor, who gives Ana an assignment that helps her growth as a budding activist.

As for the music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, I must admit I didn’t walk out singing any of the tunes. As a high school and college student I grew up on musicals, and I enjoyed the spectacle, especially the song “Adios Andres” at the top of Act Two, when the fifty-one-year-old Carmen thinks she’s pregnant, and the other women tell her it’s menopause:

Adiós Andrés, el que viene cada mes.

(Goodbye, Andres, who comes every month.)

This song hit all the right notes and advanced the action.

In terms of Chicano theatre and Broadway musicals, Luis Valdez remarked sarcastically in 1971, “Will Broadway produce a Chicano version of Hello Dolly now that it has produced a Black one?” In the early days, the Chicano art movement was the antithesis of commercial theatre. Later that decade Valdez changed his mind and wrote Zoot Suit thanks to a Rockefeller grant, and it premiered to sold out audiences at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Valdez told Chicano theatre historian Jorge Huerta, “Zoot Suit is an American play, and it’s going to open in Forum, and then I’ll take it to Broadway.” When Huerta asked him "Why do you want to do that?" Valdez responded, "because only then will they take us seriously.”

Through its forty-year metamorphoses, Real Women has explored the Latina immigrant experience in America. Like its creator, it has flourished: At fifty-six years of age Josefina López makes her living as a writer and runs her own theatre, Casa 0101, in Los Angeles. She has seen her rose garden grow—even though the show only ran about three months and closed June 29 because of soft ticket sales—laying the seeds for future Latino productions on Broadway and New York City.