There’s no need to condescend to puppets anymore.

Once largely kid’s stuff, over the years puppets have not only proliferated onstage but have proven to have as much range as some actors. There’s been puppet sex (“Avenue Q”), puppet pathos (‘War Horse”) and even puppet Shostakovich (“Opus No. 7”). And yet “Saga” — an audacious work by Wakka Wakka Productions (which produced the well-regarded “Baby Universe: A Puppet Odyssey”) and the Nordland Visual Theater — appears to push into new mature territory, even if it loses its way on the journey.

Kirjan Waage and Gwendolyn Warnock, who together wrote and directed this one-hour show at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, tackle macroeconomics by applying a microscope to the lives of a family affected by the Icelandic financial crisis. That it’s staged with imaginative theatricality and precise physical grace is less impressive than the realism of its carefully observed portraits. There’s puppet sex and pathos as well. But at its best “Saga” is about the overlooked human impact of the economic meltdown.

When we meet the stubborn, proud Gunnar Oddmunson (performed by Mr. Waage), he’s building an outdoor hot tub with his son Oli (Andrew Manjuck). This sweet domestic scene is interrupted by a news report about banks becoming “nonoperational.” What follows is a series of scenes that show Gunnar’s life falling apart: Doing the bills turns into a grueling chore; tension enters his marriage with his wife, Helga (Andrea Osp Karlsdottir); past purchases are re-examined with uncharitable scrutiny.

There are snippets of the fantastical, including a wonderful sequence in which Gunnar finds himself attacked by paperwork like a victim in “The Birds.” (Mr. Waage designed the puppets, Ms. Warnock the masks.) The puppets are quickly taken around a spare, darkly lighted stage from intricately designed miniature models of houses, cars and cities that give the story an almost cinematic pace.