Real Women Have Curves” by Josefina Lopez premiered in 1990. Twelve years later, Lopez co-authored the film based on her play. Last year, a musical version played on Broadway. Bristol Riverside is bringing back the original, lively, honest story of five Latina seamstresses, struggling financially, in East Los Angeles in 1987. And though it deals with so many relevant subjects that women still face today, this production was disappointing.
Estela runs a tiny sewing factory where her mother Carmen, her sister Ana, and two friends, Rosali and Pancha worked sewing dresses. Estela (Regina Carregha) is in debt. She not only owes money for the sewing machines, but must also raise money to pay legal expenses to defend her being in this country. Unlike the others, she doesn’t have her green card because she had been arrested for trying to “abduct a lobster.” But if she can create 100 dresses by the end of the week for a client, there is hope for her and the factory.
She is one of the eight children of Carman (Adela Romero), who couldn’t fend off her husband’s sexual advances and chose to gain weight and get fat to hopefully make him lose interest in her.
Estela’s younger sister Ana (Luana Psaros) has just graduated from high school and is working for her. Ana hates this menial work and wants to go to college, but she needs financial aid. A young feminist, also overweight, she journals regularly when she sneaks off to the bathroom.
Pancha (Ava Sofia Mattox) is a large woman who laments that she is unable to have kids. When Carmen suggests she might be pregnant again, Pancha says she will gladly raise the kid if it is true.
Finally, there is Rosali, who is always dieting. She is the only one of the five who is not significantly overweight. She, like the others except Ana, feel that the only way to catch a man is to be shapely.
They all work hard. Ana learns how to iron. Carman goes out on a date. They swoon over a magazine showing naked couples engaging in sex. So why did I have so much trouble enjoying this show? Simple. The actors were talking at each other, not to each other. There was no subtlety. The meaning of Lopez’s script did not come through amidst the ranting. Few were laughing at the comic lines of the play. I saw many in the audience nodding off. I was bored with this rather heavy-handed interpretation by Director Leyma Lopez.
At the act break (which seemed eternally long to reach), when I was in the rest room line, I talked with others who told me that it was a struggle to understand what the actors were saying. I had that problem too and only discovered much of the plot by reading about it online later. When I returned to the theater for the second act, I saw many empty seats.
The second act WAS better, as the women come to grips with their bodies, and as they blast men for their sexist views of women, I enjoyed it more. But the show on the Bristol Riverside stage does not show the feelings inside these women. Read the play. It is very good. “Real Women Have Curves” by Josefina Lopez at Bristol Riverside Theatre, 120 Radcliffe St., Bristol, PA 19007, 215-785-0100, brstage.org, thru June 14,, 2026
Philadelphia Theater Reviews by Frank Burd 