Summer is the perfect time for the Roundabout to open Toni Stone, because if there’s anything baseball fans love, it’s stories about baseball. Plays about baseball, movies about baseball, books about baseball—we can’t get enough. And even the greatest students of the game probably don’t know the story of Toni Stone, the first woman to play pro ball in the Negro Leagues.
But Toni Stone by Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly, Smart People), now at off-Broadway’s Laura Pels Theatre, is less a baseball play than a bioplay. In other words, even if you don’t know a screwball from a screwdriver, you’ll be able to follow it just fine. Toni (April Matthis) and her “boys”—“I call ’em that, but I don’t think you allowed to call them that,” she says of her teammates on the Indianapolis Clowns. “They men, through and through, each and every one. Have to fight every second of every day to be men. But they’re my boys.”—will give you a crash course in the basics early on.
“It’s all divisible by three,” says the bookish Spec (Daniel J. Bryant), commenting on the number of innings, bases, outs, players on the field, measurements of home plate and the pitcher’s mound, the distance between the bases, and so on. “That’s a trinity man. That’s religion,” notes King Tut (Phillip James Brannon). “Yep,” adds Stretch (Eric Berryman). “We takin’ you to church tonight.”
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★ review here.]
The baseball nerds in the crowd—i.e., those of us who have Bull Durham’s “I believe in the church of baseball” speech committed to memory—will revel in moments such as those. But Toni’s story is about much more than facts and figures and balls and strikes.
“I am prone to ramblin. Never could tell a story from beginning to end all nice and neat. My brain don’t work that way,” Stone says in the first scene. And she stays true to her word: Diamond’s play zips along for a few minutes, then meanders for about 20, gallops along for a few moments, and so on and so on. We hear about Stone’s first meeting with Syd, the Clowns owner, in the top of the second act—long after we’ve met him. We witness her relationship with the much older, smooth-talking Alberga (Harvy Blanks), from meeting to marriage, almost as if it’s happening between innings. Pace-wise, Toni Stone is actually pretty similar to a baseball game, so kudos to director Pam MacKinnon for achieving that kind of (semi-frustrating) authenticity.
But it’s Matthis who’s the play’s MVP. She’s a giddy delight, whether she’s reenacting Toni’s childhood antics (“I’m a little girl!” she deadpans, with a slight doublehanded wave); telling “mama” jokes with her the guys; “clowning” with her teammates (the Indianapolis Clowns have been likened to the Harlem Globetrotters); or softening in the presence of Miss Millie (Kenn E. Head), a prostitute who gives Toni a place to stay during road games and becomes, she says with a touch of pride, “my first female friend.”
One suspects Diamond’s play only scratches the surface of Toni Stone’s story (Diamond’s play is based on Martha Ackmann’s book Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone); thanks to Matthis’ performance and this slick production—we can’t forget the superb choreography, with an appropriately murky undertone, by Camille A. Brown—you’re bound to leave wanting to know more about the woman ESPN forgot.
Toni Stone opened June 20, 2019, at the Laura Pels Theatre and runs through Aug. 11. Tickets and information: roundabouttheatre.org
