Review: ‘Real Women Have Curves’ charms in Hayward

It’s a sweatshop of sorts, but a family one. In Josefina Lopez’s play “Real Women Have Curves” that opens the Douglas Morrisson Theatre’s 2016-17 season in Hayward, five Latina women work long, sweltering days and nights making fancy dresses in a small sewing factory in East Los Angeles, afraid to even open the door for ventilation lest immigration officials storm the place.

The panic is in part out of habit. Formerly undocumented immigrants, the women have all recently earned their green cards — all except the factory owner, that is, who has to sort out some other legal matters to keep the shop afloat before she feels safe enough to sort out her status.

These are all very American women who’ve been in the States a long time. The story is framed as a flashback of sorts for Ana, the youngest woman in the shop. Fresh out of high school, Ana (Janelle Aguirre, bursting with energy) is an aspiring writer and outspoken feminist who keeps precociously trying to educate her elders.

She works for her older sister Estela (a fretful Leticia Duarte), who’s severely stressed out about her ability to keep the business going and pay her workers and so giddy about some guy in the neighborhood being attracted to her that you’d think it was the first time that had ever happened. Their mother, Carmen (a charmingly quirky Annette Oliveira), also works for Estela, though she’s always derailing the workflow with her love of chitchat, drawing in cheery co-worker Rosali (sunny Emily Alvarado) and grumpy Pancha (a prickly Elena Ruggiero) in conversations about sex, pregnancy, domestic abuse and whatever other topics the playwright feels like addressing.

Although the story takes place in Los Angeles, “Real Women Have Curves” is a locally born play that premiered in 1990 at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center, produced by El Teatro de la Esperanza. It was later turned into a 2002 feature film, and Lopez is working on adapting it into a stage musical. Originally set in 1987, the play has been modernized a little, adding references to cell phones and Instagram that make some of the attitudes about sex and relationships expressed in the play seem even more old-fashioned.

There’s a tiny thread of a plot regarding a large order of dresses that has to be filled in a short period of time to avoid disaster, but really this is a play about appreciating these women. Like Ana, playwright Lopez worked for her sister in a sewing factory fresh out of high school, and this story very much plays like a loving remembrance of that time.

There’s a kind of artificiality to the way Lopez sets up the topical conversations and revelations about each character, and that comes out as a slight staginess in the performances in director Katja Rivera’s production. Andrea Bechert’s set of the sewing factory is impressively detailed and realistic, right down to all the strips of pink cloth on the floor. It is a little distracting, though, that for all the talk about how many dresses they have to produce, there’s no real visual indication of progress being made. The number of finished dresses on the rack seems to remain the same.

The play is fairly slow moving, but there’s a lot to appreciate about “Real Women Have Curves.” It has strong messages about body positivity, feminism and class consciousness, and its depiction of the hard work of formerly undocumented immigrant American women is a valuable thing in itself at this moment in American politics. Ultimately, it’s a lightweight, feel-good play, and there’s something to be said for feeling good.

Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.