The play with romance, puppets, polemics
PUPPETS are hardly a novelty on New York stages, but I’ll bet you’ve never seen one representing a talking, singing toilet plunger, have you?
Strange to say, that’s not the oddest moment in Made in China, an all-puppet musical that blends an unlikely romance between two lonely souls stranded in middle age with pointed commentary on the ties between America’s voracious consumerism and human rights abuses in China.
Presented by the brash Wakka Wakka company ( Saga, Baby Universe: A Puppet Odyssey) at the 59E59 Theaters, and written and directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage, this unclassifiable show flits freely between political commentary and surrealistic comedy – and sometimes mashes them together. It unfolds the fantastic story of Mary and Eddie, neighbours in an anonymous suburb whose dogs initially get along better than they do. (One-upping Avenue Q, this show includes both doggy and human sex, as well as full-frontal puppet nudity.)
Mary has let her body go to seed, filling her empty heart by gorging on unwholesome food. Divorced, and rarely able to see her kids or grandchildren, she also fills the void in her life with unbridled shopping sprees.
In a boisterous early se- MadeinChina quence, she rampages through a store snapping up everything in sight. But when she opens a newly bought package of Christmas tree ornaments, she also finds a note stuffed inside from a worker in a Chinese factory. It urges Mary to bring the plight of abused labourers in China to the attention of human rights organisations.
RebuffedbytheChinese-born Eddie when she seeks advice, she returns home only to find herself serenaded by a chorus of household products made in China, led by that perky plunger, and a handgun. “I was made by children in Hunan!” the gun merrily sings. “Fifteen hours each day, they’re having fun! Safely tucked away from awful sun, make for you the cheapest all-American gun!”
Things only get stranger from here. I don’t want to spoil all the show’s often-charming oddities, but eventually Mary and Eddie are plummeting down through the earth to land – where else? – in China, where they soon find themselves imprisoned, and then toiling in a grim factory.
The nicely turned songs, with music and lyrics by Yan Li, are mostly in the style of traditional US musical comedy, with occa- sional infusions of Chinese flavourings. Several are reflective laments by Eddie and Mary on their loneliness, their growing affection for each other or the bizarre predicament(s) they find themselves in.
But the most memorable moments are lighter. Among the standout comic songs is a vaudevillian duet with Uncle Sam and Mao that jabs, with sharp humour, at the symbiotic relationship between the great maw of the US marketplace and the strictly controlled – and often abused – Chinese labour force: “Deck the halls with profit margins,” they sing. “Under- cut the brand designers, hire migrants, convicts, minors!”
The performers who give voice to their characters and manipulate the puppets do so with such seamless grace. The style here is in the tradition of the Japanese bunraku: the puppeteer-actors are shrouded in black clothing, with dark veils over their faces, and almost invisible against the dark background.
I didn’t follow how Mary and Eddie escaped their labour camp by way of a dancing forest of bamboo, or for that matter how being swallowed by a dragon they encounter somehow lands them back in the US. Clearly, narrative logic is not a high priority for Wakka Wakka.
But the puppets, designed by Waage, have such distinctive personalities that the plot’s absurdities rarely intrude on our enjoyment. The prickly personality of Mary, with her pendulous breasts, is brought to life with funny-sad precision. Eddie is played with chilly frustration until he becomes entangled with Mary, after which he melts into something warmer.
But even Mary and Eddie’s dogs, and the many inanimate objects that populate the show are brought to life with a magical vividness that enchants. The romantic comedy and sociopolitical polemic aspects of Made in China may not always be smoothly integrated, but the show’s visual allure never ceases.