I’d never heard of Toni Stone, the first woman to play professional baseball on a man’s team in the Negro Leagues, but TONI STONE is now onstage presented by THE HUNTINGTON through June 16 and a CRITICS PICK! Admittedly, I know little about baseball and its history but I have heard of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson, who also played in the Negro Leagues before he broke through the white major league color line and was accepted into the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It’s something that never happened to Toni Stone who had not one, but three strikes against her– she was Black, a woman, and a female athlete thereby cementing her position among the ranks of countless other disenfranchised folks whose stories have been lost to history– almost.
photo T Charles Erickson.
Now is the time of the great excavation where buried stories are seeing daylight. In TONI STONE, playwright/director Lydia R. Diamond– inspired by Massachusetts journalist and author Martha Ackmann’s biography of Stone– has given us poetry in motion. The play opens quietly as Toni Stone stands alone center stage, tossing a ball into her glove, describing in lyrical detail the game’s allure, a matter of reach and feel and impact and possibility, her attraction to the game like a lover’s to what makes her heart and soul and mind soar like a home run hit with the inevitability of destiny. Diamond says it better and the words carry weight as the titular star of the show delivers them. Jennifer Mogbock has cred and charisma to spare as the relatively little known Toni Stone who brought her A game to a world not yet ready for it. The performance grows larger as her story unfolds.
photo T Charles Erickson.
Diamond cuts through the thicket of social, racial, and sexist issues in play, to reveal Stone’s innate talent (she was apparently a gifted all-around athlete in several sports) her drive, her attempt to have a life and do it all while honoring her gifts, her marriage, and her desire to be fulfilled as herself. Diamond also renders a detailed portrait of the whole team of vivid characters inhabited by an equally vibrant ensemble. Al’Jaleel McGhee is the towering and talented Woody with a chip on his shoulder; Anthony T. Goss as “Elzie” the ladies man; Omar Robinson as the bookish “Spec,” resident intellectual– all of them singular and striking.
The name of the team, INDIANAPOLIS CLOWNS, reveals another game the Negro Leagues had to play in addition to great baseball. They were also putting on a show, promoted by white team owners. In a pointed twist on minstrel shows where white actors in Black face played demeaning stereotypes, director Diamond here casts all Black actors in every role even those in dual roles as white characters. At one point, dancer/choreographer Ebony Williams has the team suddenly break into a witty, emotive baseball ballet pantomime, recalling the synchronized stylings of Busby Berkeley. It’s of the period, and underscores the inescapable show business trappings the CLOWNS–no fools–made their own.
photo T Charles Erickson.
The second act adds complexity as we learn more about the individual team players including Toni who must decide where and when she wants to strike out: second base or wife to a husband tired of playing second fiddle. The ending flattens out in search of a climax but circles back home to Toni, making her peace with her choices. I left wanting more, but grateful for the new tale and the talent assembled to tell it. Through Sunday, June 16, 2024 at the Huntington Theatre!
