‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Florencia Cuenca & cast. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES: THE MUSICAL
Music & lyrics by Joy Huerta & Benjamin Velez
Book by Lisa Loomer & Nell Benjamin
Based on the play by Josefina Lopez
and HBO’s Real Women Have Curves,
screenplay by Josefina Lopez & George LaVoo
Directed & choreographed by Sergio Trujillo
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West 48^th Street
https://www.realwomenhavecurvesbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

Musical stage adaptations of films and plays can be tricky indeed. On paper, a musical adaptation of Real Women Have Curves—the 1990 play by Josefina Lopez about an 18-year-old Mexican American woman in Los Angeles and her immigrant family’s struggles that was adapted into a hit 2002 HBO film starring America Ferrera—might have seemed like a hard sell. However, the finished product is sensational and one of the spring 2025 Broadway season’s most delightful surprises.

Tony nominations

The Broadway musical received two 2025 Tony Award nominations: Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Justina Machado) and Best Original Score (Music and Lyrics) for Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. Some might argue, including this reviewer, that the show deserved even more Tony nominations because it is such a beautiful and poignant musical on many levels.

From play & film to musical

When the film came out 23 years ago, it turned then-unknown America Ferrera into a star. She went on to play opposite co-star Vanessa Williams in the hit ABC TV comedy “Ugly Betty” for four seasons. The film was primarily known as a vehicle for female empowerment for plus-sized women. In 2025, however, the story of undocumented Mexican and Latina immigrants working in a women’s dress factory mirrors the current struggles of hard-working migrants in fear of being deported.

Tatianna Córdoba stars as Ana, an 18-year-old living in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles in 1987. Her family is from Mexico, but Ana is the only one who is a U.S. citizen. She has recently graduated from high school and wants to become a journalist. She obtains a full-ride scholarship to prestigious Columbia University in New York, but her mother, Carmen (Ms. Machado) wants Ana to stay in L.A. and help out with the garment-making business because the family is struggling. Carmen expects Ana to assume a traditional woman’s role and also follow in the footsteps of her older sister, Estela (Florencia Cuenca).

The family is working hard to meet a deadline for an order of 200 dresses. Each dress must be handmade, in a factory room without air-conditioning. Everyone in the factory is undocumented, but in the Reagan era, a law granted amnesty to non-citizens who had been in the USA since 1982. Although this law existed, many immigrants still felt unsafe because employers who knowingly hired “illegal” foreign nationals faced large fines and possible imprisonment.

Family decisions & the plight of Latina women

Ana faces a dilemma that is common when one is part of any family business: She’s independent, has her own dreams and wants her own life and career. In addition, she is grappling with the cultural expectations of her family as well as body-image issues. She wants to spend the summer working as an intern at a local newspaper instead of working in the factory, and this does not please her mother. What’s more, Ana meets a nice guy, Henry (Mason Reeves),  at the newspaper and starts dating him.

Real Women Have Curves is both the story of an immigrant family and also the collected stories of Latina women. All of the women are just trying to make an honest living in bleak conditions, in a city and country that is not exactly kind to them.

Itzel (Aline Mayagoitia) has one of the most moving stories. She is a refugee from Guatemala working in the factory with the others. When Itzel is arrested by immigration police, the other women fear they will be next.  Itzel and Ana have one of the show’s most powerful duets, “If I Were a Bird.”

Show-stopping ‘Curves’

Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s musical score is high-spirited and uplifting, with many great songs. The muscal’s showstopper is Act Two’s “Curves,” a song that follows a scene in which Ana and the factory women strip down to their undergarments in the stifling heat and sing about rejecting the social limitations placed on them. It’s a feel-good moment that has the audience cheering and erupting into thunderous applause.

Trujillo’s triumph

Director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo has worked on many great shows in recent years, but Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is one of his best. He has directed the cast skillfully, and the performances all coalesce well.

A solid cast

The show’s standouts include Ms. Córdoba (making her Broadway debut) as Ana. Ms. Córdoba brings all the grit, charm and determination needed for such a complicated character. The magnificent Justina Machado is a complete natural as Carmen, the traditional, no-nonsense mother of Ana and Estela. Her scenes with her family and also in the factory are all exquisitely performed.

The supporting cast members are all adept and each give their character a true-to-life quality that is often inspiring. Aline Mayagoitia’s portrayal of young Itzel is especially heartwarming. There’s just so much to enjoy in Real Women Have Curves: The Musical, from the clever dialogue to the down-to-earth production numbers and the overall message of hope when faced with the harsh realities of pursuing the American dream.

Published May 9, 2025
Reviewed at press performance on April 30, 2025

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: (left to right) Florencia Cuenca, Tatianna Córdoba & Justina Machado. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Justina Machado. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Mason Reeves & Tatianna Córdoba. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Tatianna Córdoba & Aline Mayagoitia. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Mauricio Mendoza & Justina Machado. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: The cast. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES’: Tatianna Córdoba & cast. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

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‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: (left to right) LaChanze as ‘Diva Donna,’ Ariana DeBose as ‘Disco Donna’ & Storm Lever as ‘Duckling Donna’. Photo: Joan Marcus

SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL
Songs by Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Jabara & others
Book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary & DesMcAnuff
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo
Directed by Des McAnuff
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th Street
877-250-2929, http://thedonnasummermusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

Donna Summer was not just the Queen of Disco. Anyone who was alive in the 1970s knows she was a pop-cultural phenomenon, a powerhouse who changed pop music, brought R&B and soul to a white audience and most important of all, was an influential icon of gay-male culture before AIDS. Knowing these facts, and loving her music, makes watching this misguided “jukebox musical” about Donna Summer all the more frustrating.

Donna Summer, who died of cancer in 2012 at age 63, had such an unprecedented career full of ups and downs and a glorious songbook that has all the elements of a blockbuster musical, but sadly Summer: The Donna Summer Musical is anything but.

Blame it on the scattershot, ineffective book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary and Des McAnuff, and the choppy direction by Mr. McAnuff (who definitely could do better since he won the Tony for directing the best “jukebox” opus ever, Jersey Boys). Bruce Sudano, who was married to Ms. Summer for 32 years, reportedly gave the show’s creators rights to her life story, but he obviously had too much say in the creative control because so many of the facts have either been sanitized or glossed over.

First, everyone should know the three actresses playing Ms. Summer at various stages of her life, from young “Duckling Donna” Storm Lever to Broadway veteran Ariana DeBose as “Disco Donna” and the older “Diva Donna” LaChanze, are all excellent. Ms. Lever has an angelic voice and portrays the young Donna with incredible vulnerability. Ms. DeBose, a rising star who’s been in everything from Hamilton and Motown to A Bronx Tale, is pure sass and ebullient energy when she sings classics like “I Feel Love,” “Bad Girls” and “MacArthur Park.” Finally, LaChanze (who won the 2006 Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for The Color Purple) is often haunting as the older, wiser “Diva Donna,” especially when belting the lesser-known ballad “Friends Unknown.” All three women do justice to Ms. Summer’s vintage hits, but of course no one could ever replicate the late singer’s inimitable, multi-octave vocal range, but Ms. Lever, Ms. DeBose and LaChanze are all outstanding in their own right regardless. Especially noteworthy is Ms. DeBose and LaChanze’s rendition of “No More Tears (Enough is Enough),” the golden classic duet by Ms. Summer and Barbra Streisand. Ms. Streisand and the Queen of Disco both had the greatest female pop voices of the 1970s, and Ms. DeBose and LaChanze do a brilliant job recreating the song.

Mr. Domingo, Mr. Cary and Mr. McAnuff have patched together half-baked, episodic scenes with stilted dialogue in an attempt to weave Ms. Summer’s turbulent career and songs into a narrative. Chronologically nothing makes sense here to anyone who lived through Donna Summer’s glory days and downfall. Important figures in Ms. Summer’s career, from Italian producer Giorgio Moroder (Kaleigh Cronin) to Neil Bogart (Aaron Krohn), the record executive who helped make her a star, are written as one-dimensional cartoons. Scenes with her family back in Boston and an an abusive lover in Los Angeles are so poorly written and melodramatically executed, they seem like scenes from a bad daytime soap.

The book writers pay lip service to the decline of disco, but mostly blame Ms. Summer’s sudden drop in record sales in the early 1980s to mismanagement by her then record label, Casablanca, and there was much more to it than that if one knows about music from the era. One piece of dialogue early in the show, “For the longest time, people had me convinced there was something wrong with this music. ‘Dance music.’ Like the term was some kind of insult, “attempts to explain, perhaps, why her journey through disco stardom was so short-lived. Did the authors of the book forget about the backlash against disco? Anyone of a certain age remembers the summer of 1979 when a Chicago DJ, unhappy with so many radio stations switching to all-disco formats, destroyed disco records on air and got huge amounts of publicity. Disco was a threat to traditional rock, and appealed to a gay and black urban demographic, and Donna Summer typified the genre.

The most puzzling and downright offensive fault of Summer is its depiction, and lack thereof, regarding Donna Summer’s enormous gay male following. Gay men were the first to embrace Donna’s music, but for some head-scratching reason Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo mostly have women in drag as men in the chorus. Toward the beginning of the show, Donna says the disco scene was “A world of mystery and androgyny, blurring all the lines. It didn’t matter if you were a boy or girl or anything in between. All that mattered was that you were ready to dance.” It is a shame the creators chose to tell us this fact instead of simply showing us.

Near the show’s end, when LaChanze as Diva Donna sings “Friends Unknown,” with projections of photos of gay men dancing, that audiences even see what the world of Donna Summer was really about. She talks about the infamous “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” statement that made many gay men protest her—and her career never quite recovered from such a stupid and asinine statement as a result. It was gays who made Donna who she was, and she paid the price for offending her most devoted fans. Donna spent the rest of her life regretting it, but this fact is barely explored. Was it all simply a harmless joke she made at a concert, as depicted here?

Depicting the truth and consequences of any troubled celebrity’s backstory is the only effective way any biography, stage, film or book, should be written.

Donna Summer was a mega talent and a pioneer, paving the way for Madonna and other female recording artists. She was also a tremendously flawed and private person, and she deserves a more thoughtful, intelligent, uncensored stage adaptation of her legacy than this. Her life was “Hot Stuff” indeed, but this musical is lukewarm at best.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 26, 2018
Reviewed at April 25, 2018 press performance.

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL”: Ariana DeBose. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: Storm Lever. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus

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‘A BRONX TALE’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

A BRONX TALE
Book by Chazz Palminteri
Music by Alan Menken
Lyrics by Glenn Slater
Directed by Robert DeNiro & Jerry Zaks
Choreographed by Sergio Trujillo
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
(212-239-6200), www.abronxtalethemusical.com

By David NouNou

I can honestly say A Bronx Tale is the first truly, thoroughly enjoyable show of the 2016 fall season and we are very close to the end of it. That should give you an idea of how exciting this fall season has been. This is not to undermine the show but to totally praise it. Who else could have written the book as well as Chazz Palminteri? After all, it is about his life and who should know it better? The music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater capture the mood, feel, and essence of the 1960s doo-wop and rock-and-roll sound to perfection. It distills the 1960s and transports us to the Bronx, Belmont Avenue and an Italian neighborhood where there was right from wrong and rules were still obeyed.

In 1960 young Calogero (Hudson Loverro) witnesses Sonny (Nick Cordero) kill a guy outside his building, but in a lineup, he refuses to rat Sonny out. A trust and bond develops between Calogero and Sonny; this undermines the bond Calogero has with his father, Lorenzo (Richard H. Blake). Lorenzo knows his son has talent and doesn’t want to see him waste it. Come 1968, Calogero (Bobby Conte Thornton) is grownup, almost a wastrel, and still is torn between his father’s values and Sonny’s flash. Thrown into the mix is Jane (the lovely Ariana DeBose) who is black and lives on Webster Avenue and the two inevitably fall for each other —which does not sit well with the two neighborhoods because races did not mix even if you lived in the same community. Each few blocks were an entity unto themselves.

Sure, the story seems familiar, but it is done in a fresh way, and that fresh thing is sincerity. There is a story here and it tells it from the heart with no artificial fillers. Robert DeNiro and Jerry Zaks have taken the story and directed it without any frills, just fine-tuned it to let the tale unfold in the most simplistic and realistic of ways.

The standout performance is Nick Cordero; he was a showstopper and Tony nominee in Bullets Over Broadway, the only good thing in that dreadful musical. He is sensational here as Sonny the gangster. It is a thrill to watch this man dominate and command a stage and watch his talent grow with each succeeding show. Richard H. Blake is admirable as Lorenzo. As the young Calogero, Hudson Loverro is an adorable child actor doing his job well without being cloying. Ariana DeBose—who just left Hamilton—as Jane is a joy to see and hear. Bobby Conte Thornton has a nice voice and tries to be sincere but lacks the stage presence to bring any dimension to the older Calogero; the role calls for a more seasoned actor to dominate the stage.

The show is a tribute to another time. It brings back to life a moving, stirring, delectable Americana morsel that preserves a period, time, place, sound, and people that is part of American history now.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published December 8, 2016
Reviewed at press performance on December 7, 2016

‘A BRONX TALE’: Nick Cordero & Richard H. Blake. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: (left to right) Rory Max Kaplan, Keith White, Dominic Nolfi, Joe Barbara, Hudson Loverro, Cary Tedder. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: Bobby Conte Thornton & cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: Arianna DeBose (center) & Gilbert L. Bailey II & Bradley Gibson, Trista Dollison & Christiani Pitts (L-R). Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: (left to right) Hudson Loverro, Richard H. Blake, Lucia Giannetta. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: (left to right) Trista Dollison, Ariana DeBose & Christiani Pitts. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: Nick Cordero & Hudson Loverro. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: Hudson Loverro & Richard H. Blake. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A BRONX TALE’: Bobby Conte Thornton & Nick Cordero. Photo: Joan Marcus

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‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe as Gloria Estefan. Photo: Matthew Murphy

ON YOUR FEET!
THE STORY OF GLORIA & EMILIO ESTEFAN
Featuring music produced & recorded by Gloria & Emilio Estefan
Book by Alexander Dinelaris
Directed by Jerry Mitchell
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo
Marquis Theatre
46th Street (between Broadway & 8th Avenue)
877-250-2929, www.onyourfeetmusical.com

By Scott Harrah

You’ll shake your body and do that “Conga” and yes, the “Rhythm is Gonna Get You.” If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s listening to the infectious songs of Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine and her subsequent solo work, you’ll overlook Alexander (Birdman) Dinelaris’ boilerplate book of this energetic show. Why? Because Gloria and Emilio Estefan have enough golden oldie hits in their songbook to make us disregard the paper-thin storyline of their rise, fall and rise from the Cuban barrios of Miami to international stardom, with all the proverbial bumps in between. On Your Feet! The Story of Gloria and Emilio Estefan is one of the few feel-good Broadway shows in an otherwise lackluster fall season.

Granted, as a jukebox musical, the narrative in On Your Feet! is not as seamless as Jersey Boys or even Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, but it doesn’t matter. Broadway has never mounted a jukebox show with a Latin, salsa-tinged flavor until this, and the Estefans were indeed trailblazers that paved the way for Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, Shakira and all the Latin pop crossover stars that followed. When the focus is on music and dancing, the show more than delivers with colorful costumes, Sergio Trujillo’s ebullient choreography, and a full Latin band, complete with all the inimitable Cuban percussion, flawless salsa sounds and a horn section, offering, to borrow an iconic line from “Conga,” “the rhythm of the island/And like sugarcane so sweet.”

Newcomer Ana Villafañe makes a superb debut here since she looks and sounds a lot like the real Gloria Estefan, and Ms. Villafañe shows off fine acting chops in numerous dramatic showdowns with family members. However, Josh Segarra, as her famous husband, looks nothing like the real Emilio Estefan. Mr. Segarra is also not much of a singer, but he is so drop-dead handsome and has such an endearing accent that audiences won’t care. Ms. Estefan’s story, while inspiring, is the typical rags-to-riches tale: Born in Cuba, young Gloria and her family fled to Miami as Fidel Castro rose to power.

Most of Act One deals with young Gloria’s clashes with her overprotective mother Gloria Fajardo, played with spunk by Andréa Burns (In the Heights), and Gloria’s dream of becoming a singer. Her mother does not approve of Gloria making music with Emilio and his Miami Latin Boys (later to become the famous Miami Sound Machine once Gloria became the lead vocalist), particularly since Mrs. Fajardo was performing as a nightclub singer in Havana, but had to put her own dreams on hold as the Batista government crumbled. Grandmother Consuelo (the winning Alma Cuervo) encourages Gloria to pursue her dreams of writing and singing music. Meanwhile, Gloria finishes a college degree in psychology while still performing on the club circuit.

We see Gloria and Emilio become stars in the music world throughout Latin America, but they encounter resistance from the record label when trying to release their first English-language single, “Dr. Beat.” They finally release the song, working hard to get it played on English-language Miami radio stations and in dance clubs across the country, but music industry executives tell them the song is too “dance” for mainstream America. When the group finally releases the Latin-tinged “Conga” (perhaps their biggest hit ever), the rest is history. The Estefans are on their way to superstardom by the end of Act One, leaving everything on a high note as cast members, including a little Jewish Bar Mitzvah boy in a yarmulke, move offstage and pull random audience members into a conga line for “Conga.”

Act Two mostly chronicles the Estefans’ marital struggles as Gloria becomes increasingly exhausted from touring, and fights with her husband and mother. In the winter of 1990, while on a tour bus on a snowy Pennsylvania highway, a horrible accident lands Gloria in the hospital, with a spinal injury and the possibility of paralysis, a nine-hour surgery and months of physical therapy. You already know the rest: Not only did Gloria recover, she went on to become an even bigger star, making a comeback on the American Music Awards, and singing another of her mega hits, “Reach,” at the Closing Ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in front of a global audience of millions. She made a hit solo record, reinventing such disco classics as “Turn the Beat Around” and the pop standard “Everlasting Love,” plus did many more sold-out world tours and Las Vegas gigs.

All the Gloria Estefan favorites are here, from “Bad Boys” to “1-2-3,” “Get On Your Feet,” “Words Get in the Way,” “Coming Out of the Dark,” and more. Gloria Estefan has won seven Grammy Awards and sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, so she is more than worthy of being a “jukebox heroine.” Cynics may write the show off as another excuse to peddle tried-and-true songs to the masses, but so what? Besides, Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell directs everything nicely with his usual entertaining touches, making On Your Feet! a “Gloria-fied” hit. If you are a Gloria Estefan fan, you must get “On Your Feet!“…and get tickets.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 12, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on November 11, 2015

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ The cast of the new musical. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Carlos E. Gonzalez & Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Alexandra Suarez as Little Gloria. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Andréa Burns. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe & Josh Segarra (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ The cast of the musical based on the life and music of Gloria & Emilio Estefan. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Andréa Burns. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Josh Segarra & Alma Cuervo. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Josh Segarra & Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Josh Segarra & Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘ON YOUR FEET!’ Ana Villafañe. Photo: Matthew Murphy

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