THE MORNING LINE DATE: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 FROM: Melissa Cohen Angela Yamarone PAGES: 14, including this page C3 January 17, 2017 Lisa Kron Awarded Kleban Prize for Musical Theater By Andrew R. Chow Lisa Kron and Daniel Zaitchik have been awarded the 2017 Kleban Prizes for writing in musical theater. Ms. Kron, 55, who already has an impressive body of work, won for most promising musical theater librettist. She won two Tony Awards in 2015 for writing the book and lyrics of “Fun Home,” a Broadway hit about a lesbian cartoonist dealing with her father’s suicide. Previously, she wrote and performed in memoir-driven plays including “Well” and “2.5 Minute Ride.” (She was eligible for the award because her work has been on Broadway for less than two years; “Fun Home” ran for a year and a half.) Mr. Zaitchik, 36, won for most promising musical theater lyricist. He is a composer-playwright whose projects, including “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” have been developed at Lincoln Center Theater and Ars Nova. He is also a recording singer-songwriter and has acted Off Broadway. The judges this year were the songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez; the actress Mary Testa; and the producer Ira Weitzman. The prize comes with $100,000; previous winners include Jason Robert Brown (“Parade”); Jeff Marx and Mr. Lopez (“Avenue Q”); and Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak (“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”). The Kleban Foundation was established in 1988 in the will of Edward Kleban, a composer and lyricist who won a Tony and a Pulitzer for “A Chorus Line.” C6 January 17, 2017 Review: ‘Made in China,’ With Romance, Polemics and Puppets By Charles Isherwood 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 (with input from the ensemble), this unclassifiable show flits freely between political commentary and surrealistic comedy — and sometimes mashes them together. It unfolds the fantastic story of Mary (voiced by Peter Russo) and Eddie (Ariel Estrada), neighbors 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 children or grandchildren, she also fills the void in her life with unbridled shopping sprees. In a boisterous early sequence, 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 laborers in China to the attention of human rights organizations. Rebuffed by the Chinese-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 (Charles Pang), 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 (via, ahem, Mary’s toilet) 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 American musical comedy, with infusions of Chinese flavorings. They are performed by four members of the Norwegian chamber music group MiNensemblet, along with Mr. Yan and Max Mamon. 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 (Stephen J. Mark) and Mao (Mr. Pang) that jabs, with sharp humor, at the symbiotic relationship between the great maw of the American marketplace and the strictly controlled — and often abused — Chinese labor force: “Deck the halls with profit margins,” they sing. “Undercut the brand designers, hire migrants, convicts, minors!” As in the best puppet theater, the performers who give voice to their characters and manipulate the puppets do so with such seamless grace that we absorb the story with minimal distraction. 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. You are hardly aware of their presence, which makes it easier to accept the more bizarre episodes and unlikely transitions. I didn’t follow how Mary and Eddie escaped their labor camp by way of a dancing forest of bamboo, or for that matter how being swallowed by a dragon they encounter while leaping from bamboo stalk to bamboo stalk somehow lands them back in America. Clearly narrative logic is not a high priority for Wakka Wakka. But the puppets, designed by Mr. Waage, have such distinctive personalities that the plot’s absurdities rarely intrude on our enjoyment. The prickly personality of Mary, with her bulging, needy blue eyes and pendulous breasts, is brought to life by Mr. Russo with funny-sad precision. So, too, does Mr. Estrada bring fine emotional shadings to Eddie, whose chilly frustration with the woman whose life he becomes entangled in melts into something warmer. But even Mary and Eddie’s dogs, and the many inanimate objects that populate the show — the dancing letter that sets the plot in motion, and of course that peppy plunger — 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. Made in ChinaTickets Through Feb. 28. 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 212-279-4200, 59E59.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Credits Written and directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage; music and lyrics by Yan Li; puppets by Mr. Waage; underscore by Lars Petter Hagen; sets by Yu Ting Lin, Ms. Warnock and Mr. Waage; lighting/technical direction by Alex Goldberg; costumes by Ms. Warnock and Mr. Waage; sound by Tyler Kieffer; video animation by Tiger Cai; Mackenzie Blade, production stage manager; Gabrielle Brechner, executive producer. Cast Lei Lei Bavoil, Ariel Estrada, Dorothy James, Wei-Yi Lin, Andrew Manjuck, Stephen J. Mark, Charles Pang, Peter Russo and Hansel Tan (Puppeteers). C6 January 17, 2017 Review: ‘[Porto]’ Features a Bar Regular Looking for Love By Laura Collins-Hughes The Edison lights are a tipoff, glowing amber above the L-shaped, dark-wood bar. Also the foie gras sausage on the menu, and the snacks for nibbling: fried chickpeas, jerky popcorn. And no, that is not jerky as in beef. “Venison,” the waiter says. “Duh.” This neighborhood spot, in gentrifying Brooklyn, is “a boushy bar,” the unseen narrator tells us in Kate Benson’s stealthily ferocious, comfortingly hopeful, very funny new play, “[Porto],” at the Bushwick Starr. The term “boushy” is a portmanteau, related to “bougie.” Its ridiculous pretensions notwithstanding, the place is a kind of refuge for Porto (Julia Sirna-Frest), who would really like to be leading a healthier life in a slimmer body: less indulgence, more moderation. But the warmly lit bar promises company and conversation. And the main voice in Porto’s head — a.k.a. the narrator (Ms. Benson), who wields a godlike influence — makes a compelling argument involving the actress Lillie Langtry, who, in the early 1900s, sued Keens Steakhouse to force it to admit women. “So really,” the narrator says. “You sitting alone at the bar: A feminist act. Do it.” Porto does. The play, too, is a feminist act, placing a Hermione type — a bookish, whip-smart woman — at its center and forcing her to do something about her own loneliness. Fearful, guarded, dogged by self-doubt, Porto is intensely weary of being alone but certain she is doomed by her appearance never to get the hot guy. In her head, a Chorus of Dumb Bunnies — human size, in furry rabbit suits — berates her about the things she needs to change if she wants to catch a man. The insistent voices of feminist intellectuals are in there, too, urging her not to be such a soft touch. This production, part of the Exponential Festival, reunites Ms. Benson and the director Lee Sunday Evans, who won a joint Obie in 2015 for “A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes,” at New Georges. “[Porto]” is a quieter play, less attention-grabbing and not as seamlessly staged. A delicate mechanism, it hasn’t fully found its rhythm off the page, despite a largely excellent cast led by the wonderful Ms. Sirna-Frest.