"Mission Drift," a Musical at the Coil Festival "Mission Drift," a sprawling musical epic about five centuries of American expansion and destruction, is the kind of frisky theatrical adventure that would be twice as much fun at about half the length. Presented at the Connelly Theater in the East Village as part of the Coil Festival organized by Performance Space 122, the show is a freewheeling collage critiquing the country's devouring ambition as seen through the glittering prism of Las Vegas, that great neon mirage that sprang from the Nevada sands to seduce and betray innumerable dreamers of big dreams. Directed by Rachel Chavkin with a marked lack of emphasis on editing, it's been created by the New York troupe the TEAM - that's Theater of the Emerging American Moment. I prefer the less pretentious acronym. Like the group's similarly ambitious, and similarly patience-straining "Architecting," "Mission Drift" is an attempt to put the American psyche on the analyst's couch by riffing on pop culture with tongue partly in cheek and lecture notes stuffed in the pockets. "Architecting" explored the country's racial past by cannibalizing "Gone With the Wind" for comic and symbolic fodder. There's a lot about the company's new project to take heedless, heady pleasure in, notably the bluesy music by Heather Christian, who plays the piano and portrays the evening's unofficial M.C. and resident leggy showgirl, called Miss Atomic. Ms. Christian has a terrific soulful voice that can ache with yearning intensity at one moment and vibrate with the fervor of roof-raising R&B the next. She also has a little of the impish pixie charm of Kristin Chenoweth. In fact the six cast members are all fine singers, and while the lyrics to the songs are sometimes heavy-handed ("If you believe in Vegas, you believe in God") or full of blurry imagery, when "Mission Drift" is singing, the show is captivating. Music accounts for only about one-quarter of its two-hour intermissionless running time unfortunately. And while there are pleasures aplenty in the production's blend of synchronized dance and stylized noodling with comic archetypes, after a while it becomes clear that the satire isn't going to grow sharper, and that its ideas about the destructive force of American capitalism are going to be belabored to the point of tedium. Our story begins in a time before time - never a good sign - when two mythic beasts, brothers named Love and Wrestling, fought for control of the emerging world. ("I'm not being poetic," the narrating Miss Atomic snaps. "Those were their names.") These legendary figures are ultimately meant to represent the twin forces of creation and destruction that will war throughout history in the hearts of humanity, and more specifically in the country to be called America. "Mission Drift" then drops us into Las Vegas at this very minute, when vast tracts of houses are in foreclosure, and the casino boom is going bust. Joan (Amber Gray) is a third-generation employee of a giant gaming corporation that has been forced to scale back its operations. Having embarked on a new casino complex called the Ark, in the gargantuan Steve Wynn mold, the company has had to let workers go, and Joan finds herself jobless, pounding down beers and brooding on the fate of the city she has always loved. She takes solace in the company of a loner cowboy named Chris (Ian Lassiter), whose own house in the desert outside Las Vegas has recently been bought up by the expanding city. Their story is woven intermittently into the evening's dominant tale, which begins in Amsterdam in 1624, where two 14-year-old emigrants meet at the dock just before embarking on a ship heading to the New World. Joris (Brian Hastert) woos the pigtailed Catalina (Libby King) with promises of prosperity: "We will have first pick of the land when we arrive and access to the first livestock shipments," he says. I will work as a trader, and you will tend the farm. She's tempted but asks to check out his genitals first. "My boss at the brothel told me exactly what to look for," she explains. As it proceeds to ramble through the next four centuries of American frontier-busting, "Mission Drift" mixes such deadpan, juvenile humor with interludes of stylized dance and more sober storytelling forms. There's lots of narration. Joris and Catalina represent archetypal American pioneers, though they change their names over the years as they achieve immortality but not satisfaction, at least until the last frontier has been conquered - there's nowhere to go after the California Gold Rush stalls - and they permanently settle in the Nevada desert, becoming the very gaming tycoons responsible for the folly of the Ark. It is when both strands in the epic meet, in the Las Vegas of today, that "Mission Drift" all but comes to a halt, with long passages in which the characters" fates are detailed at numbing length. The production has, after all, made its points about America's toxic worship of capitalist endeavor pretty clear by now. The atomic bomb tests in Nevada are tangentially included, presumably as another symbol of dangerous Yankee overreaching. While the energy of the engaging performers never flags (Ms. King is particularly funny as the ever-on-the-make, ever-unsatisfied Catalina), "Mission Drift" ultimately suffers from mission overkill: an inability to reach a conclusion without squandering the good will that its more theatrically engaging passages have engendered. By the time the Catalina character has fled Las Vegas to head back East and has met herself (another Dutch Pioneer Woman from centuries before) heading the other way, the idea that the American story keeps recycling itself provoked mostly anxiety. I was afraid that "Mission Drift" was going to keep going in circles indefinitely. By the TEAM, in collaboration with Heather Christian and Sarah Gancher; directed by Rachel Chavkin; music by Ms. Christian; sets by Nick Vaughan; costumes by Brenda Abbandandolo; lighting by Jake Heinrich; sound by Matt Hubbs; dramaturgs, Paz Pardo and Jenny Worton; technical director, Joseph Cantalupo; production stage manager, Dave Polato; general manager, Nate Koch. A TEAM production, presented by PS122, Vallejo Gantner, artistic director; as part of the Coil Festival. At the Connelly Theater, 220 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101; ps122.org. Through Feb. 4. Running time: 2 hours. WITH: Heather Christian (Miss Atomic), Amber Gray (Joan), Brian Hastert (Joris), Libby King (Catalina), Ian Lassiter (Chris) and Lucy Kendrick Smith (Pioneer Woman).