Come one, come all – or at least those with a moderately high tolerance for heavy metal music and heavy-whimsy attitude mixed in with their sociopolitical commentary. The (self-titled) National Theater of the United States of America is taking on the pitfalls of faith and conformity in its raucous, neovaudevillian, sporadically coherent “Abacus Black Strikes NOW!: The Rampant Justice of Abacus Black.” And it has enlisted the help of the titular-twice-over Crusader to tell its strange and terrible tale.

Yes, Crusader with a capital “C.” This is no garden-variety true believer but a participant in the actual Holy Crusades, those papacy-sponsored military skirmishes against Muslims and other non-Christians. The practically comatose Abacus Black (Mark Doskow) has seen better days, although for a 600-year-old character in an off-off-Broadway show with a negligible production budget, he looks about as good as can be expected.

Throughout this genre-hopping picaresque, various followers attest to Abacus Black’s miraculous abilities, and he is introduced with retina-taxing flashes of white light and bombastic power chords that put Spinal Tap to shame. (Yehuda Duenyas has been credited with the fabulously cataclysmic sound design.) Despite having been touched by Jesus – “not in a gay way or anything,” he assures the audience – Abacus Black is a defiantly Old Testament sort of guy. “He holds your heart in a hand that can crush as easily as caress,” one of his acolytes announces, and what we see of his storied past involves a lot more crushing than caressing.

So what if strings can occasionally be spotted moving Abacus Black’s arms? So what if his fabled “City of Gold” remains out of reach after six centuries? “The more we believe it,” they claim of Abacus Black’s divinity, “the more we see it manifest.” That sort of mutually reinforcing devotion is not easily shaken; in fact, any suggestion otherwise is treated with great suspicion. Anyone who isn’t with them, in other words, may as well be part of the marauding band of brain-eating zombies outside their compound. In fact, authors Normandy Sherwood and James Stanley imply that such doubts may even turn you into one of those creatures.

NTUSA is clearly taking aim at fundamentalism and conformity of all stripes. Appropriately enough, this is a relatively unautocratic production for the group, which has become known for having no director – or, rather, for having as many directors as there are actors, writers, and designers. But the company has un-delegated its responsibilities somewhat here: While Mr. Duenyas is ostensibly first among equals, three of the seven parties involved have been credited with “direction.” This still might be two directors too many.

At the risk of sounding schoolmarmish, there’s a reason cars have only one steering wheel. Directors serve a purpose: They provide the critical perspective needed to separate the theatrical wheat from the chaff, and they give episodic pieces like “Abacus Black” a needed structural armature. The seven members of NTUSA clearly have strong and potentially rewarding ideas of how to steer the story. But too many chunks carry on for too long without cohering to or illuminating all the other ones around them.

The chief offender on this score is the protracted sequence enumerating Abacus Black’s introduction to and subjugation of a fellow wannabe prophet, a hillbilly visionary in a coonskin cap (James Stanley). In a play made largely of clever (if not always necessary) snippets, this story eats up far too much stage time and offers little of a dramatic payoff. Once brain-eating zombies have been introduced into a narrative, it’s generally risky to let too much time elapse between their appearances.

As the evening’s host, Mr. Stanley shows the same sort of verbal dexterity with ludicrous, euphemism-heavy boosterism that he displayed in “Pastoralia,” a recent NTUSA side project directed by Mr. Duenyas. (“Yes, we consider ourselves chosen. Who doesn’t? Don’t feel bad about it.”) He and Jonathan Jacobs have an engaging Mutt-and-Jeff rapport, while Jesse Hawley and Ms. Sherwood appear to have vamped their way south from a Richard Foreman production (the company is riddled with veterans of Mr. Foreman’s Ontological-Hysterical Theater). Playing someone who’s quite possibly dead inevitably limits Mr. Doskow’s expressive capabilities, but he nonetheless gives Abacus Black an occasional blast of pugnacious energy.

In this post-Wooster Group age of downtown theater, NTUSA is refreshingly free of the current yen for high-tech bells and whistles. The group has talent and energy to burn, and is attacking off-off-Broadway with a swagger that would make Abacus Black proud. If its members can decide with a little more certainty whose story they want to tell and how they want to tell it, their own City of Gold may be within sight.

Until February 12 (150 First Avenue, at 9th Street, 212-352-3101).