Review: TO BATTLE Packs a Literal- and Emotional- Punch at Big Storm Performance Company

If you saw Very Berry Dead at Big Storm last year (and I hope you did), you probably had some idea what to expect with actor/writer José Pérez IV's latest show, To Battle. You'd be right, but you'd also be wrong. Both shows blend absurdism and realism, comedy and drama, and tease out revelations that contextualize everything until the last minute. Both shows include an electic group of Pittsburgh's best non-union character actors. But while Very Berry Dead was a formally conventional stage comedy-drama, To Battle is something else entirely. For years, people have said they wanted to see Scott Pilgrim onstage, and this is as close as ANYONE has come yet to actualizing that dream. 

Jo (Pérez), aka Pizza Jo, is working at a pizza delivery joint and doing very little with his life. (Part of the show's design conceit is that every character is gender neutral and can be played by actors not only of any gender/sexuality, but any specific combat skill set; for the sake of clarity, all pronouns used here reflect the performer, not the written character.) Best buddy Nat (Andy Hickly), an affable man-child in the Patrick Star tradition, greets Jo with a surprise: he's signed them both up for "a quest." Enter Squall (Tonya Lynn), who at first appears to be a LARPer but turns out to be a wandering adventurer who rights wrongs with heroic derring-do. Nat and Squall drag Jo into a secret world just out of sight, where demons haunt roller rinks, neighborly squabbles can be settled with duels, and a good book can not only give you knowledge, but a hand-to-hand combat implement. Along the way, Jo finds renewed enjoyment in life, but also realizes that the people around him in this suburban underworld are often just as lost and hurting as he is.

If you've seen Scott Pilgrim, the format here is going to be familiar: imagine someone took a musical, cut out all the songs, then replaced all the remaining dancing with elaborate, chaotic fight sequences. The fight choreography here, by Pérez (himself Pittsburgh's premier fight and intimacy coordinator) spans styles and influences from pro wrestling to medieval fencing to the slapstick-meets-martial-arts prop fighting of 1980s Jackie Chan films. All of the actors have a distinct "fight style" baked into their performances based on their own individual specialties; I imagine that if you saw To Battle in a different city or with a different cast, it would feel like a vastly different show. 

Our central trio give astonishingly three-dimensional performances for such goofy stock characters. Pérez, when he isn't fighting, is snarking and sulking as Jo with a John Mulaney-esque, dour dryness; his opening monologue-to-a-phone in the pizza parlor immediately sets the comic tone and sustains it throughout. As Nat, Andy Hickly doesn't so much reveal hidden depths in the stock character of the buddy-bro Best Friend as gradually reveal the simple, sincere dignity in him. He truly and completely means well, even if "becoming squires" isn't the best way to help a hurting friend. Tonya Lynn's Squall ties the tone of the whole piece together; I'm familiar with Lynn from her seriocomic portrayal of Shakespeare's great roles for older men in the Unrehearsed Shakespeare troupe, and she brings a similar blend of gravitas and ridiculousness to the battle-hungry LARPER. In her hands, Squall is a twenty-first century Don Quixote in both madness and idealism, and Jo and Nat are both Sanchos. 

The supporting cast play slightly less dimensional, but more outlandish, characters, all of whom are accomplished fighters and stunt performers themselves. Rachel Smith, as Taco Jess, is hilariously deadpan and creepy as the conspiracy-obsessed fast-food worker who may actually be more right than wrong. Ryan M. Rattley, Carolyn Jerz and fight captain Dara Jade Tiller appear repeatedly as the Jackals, a Team Rocket-ish trio of comic ne'er-do-wells who turn out to be adventure-seekers like our central trio. The three of them fully embrace the roles' abilities to create living cartoon characters: big poses, exaggerated comic voices, heightened physicality (Carolyn Jerz, as Shooter, is literally a dog-person Otherkin who runs and fights on all fours). The ensemble-based fight sequences which feature our central trio also allow the supporting leads to explore their fight specialties more in ensemble roles. Darrin Mosley, Jr. and Mason Dowd, who play two squabbling neighbors and frenemies, double as vampire librarians; Dowd "sells" a blow better than anyone in the cast (which anyone who's ever seen pro wrestling will tell you is much harder and more valuable than you'd think), making him ideal to play a featured miniboss for the heroes to land blows on. Similarly, in the final battle against an army of yuppie businessmen, Tiller and Jerz of the Jackals double respectively as a gladiatorial sword-and-shield duelist and a grappling/aerial brawler among the yuppie ensemble. 

As the bodies, punchlines, props and puns fly across the mostly bare stage (the set is a few chairs and some gymastics mats) it's easy to get swept away in the silliness and chaos. Still, the second half of the show delves into deeper and heavier waters emotionally, exploring who these characters are, and the realities of life that would make them want to seek escapism in this parallel world of adventuring. To Battle isn't a stunt show or a Saturday morning cartoon. It's a very good, well written and resonant play that happens to be in the FORM of a stunt show or a Saturday morning cartoon. It's not the sort of play just any company can do; unlike other combat-centric shows like West Side Story or She Kills Monsters, you need a company where everybody is equally skilled across a variety of stunt, combat and physical-performance disciplines. As such, count yourself lucky that you got to see a production of this hidden gem of a show, and if you didn't see it yet, rush to get tickets. This adventure won't last long.