National, London
A fine reason to make theatre is to probe who we are, and what our place is in the world. Since 2004, New York company the Team have been doing just that, with theatrically dexterous, multilayered, sometimes frustratingly rambling shows, which constantly question what it means to be American in a swiftly changing 21st-century political and economic landscape.
First seen on the Edinburgh fringe in 2011, this skittering musical satire examines the mirage of the American dream and wonders how the energetic spirit of 17th-century pioneers could end up bankrupt in Las Vegas's infamous neon boneyard. The ever-expanding "shining city" of atomic testing, casinos and slot machines, Elvis and insatiable consumer consumption, was hard hit by the 2008 financial crash, and boom quickly turned to bust.
Hot, metallic anger bubbles beneath the bright, pop-culture facade of this show, which matches the fakery of a city selling impossible dreams with its own blatant tricks and fictions. It entwines the stories of Joan, a third-generation casino worker who has been laid off because of the slump, the homeless Chris, and two Dutch immigrants, Joris and Catalina. Like vampires, the last pair remain eternally young while rampaging across centuries and the continent in endless pursuit of bigger and bigger bucks and growth. Over it all, like a Greek chorus that knows it will all end badly, presides the seductive figure of Miss Atomic (the brilliant Heather Christian), a husky-voiced chanteuse.
The show doesn't quite sustain the energy into the second half, but its mix of the epic and everyday, myth and madness, music and storytelling, create a glorious patchwork in which pitch and tone – sometimes cartoonishly garish, other times suffused with aching loss – are as crucial as intellectual argument. A theatrical tornado, and a sideways glimpse into America's tarnished, weary soul.
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