'Moon’ rises high at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte
"Catching the Moon," aimed at ages 7 and up, runs through March 24 at Children's Theatre of Charlotte
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on March 10, 2024. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
Review: Children’s Theatre of Charlotte’s ‘Catching the Moon’ inspires with the childhood story of the first woman to play for a major league baseball team
Kayla Simone Ferguson (center) plays Marcenia Lyle Stone, who refuses to be left out as she follows her baseball dreams. (Photo credit: Children’s Theatre of Charlotte)
by Lawrence Toppman
The title of the world premiere at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte is “Catching The Moon: The Story Of A Young Girl’s Baseball Dream.” But I’m going to start by talking about a sun.
The entire cast brings Nichole Jackson’s lines and the songs she wrote with composer Tyrone L. Robinson to vivid life. But the show, based on a 2005 book by Crystal Hubbard, rests mostly on the sturdy shoulders of the title character, Minnesota middle schooler Marcenia Lyle. Watching radiantly irrepressible Kayla Simone Ferguson, who’s seldom offstage for more than two minutes of the hour-long show, you really believe this girl could rise like a Stone.
That would be Toni Stone, the name Marcenia Lyle Stone used as the first woman to play for a major league professional baseball team. Stone barnstormed for years, playing for American Legion and minor league teams before breaking into the Negro Leagues for two years in the early 1950s. History has not forgotten her, even if most fans have: You’ll find her at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
We meet her in this play as the quick-thinking, school-averse daughter of a barber (Zach Humphrey) and a mom who cleans houses (Janeta Jackson Lynn). Along with Clarence and Harold, a charming kind of Greek chorus who comment on the action (Griffin Digsby and Stephan JoQuan Wilson), she rules the sandlots and figures she’s a cinch to make the cut for a baseball camp run by World Series-winning manager Gabby Street (Rob Addison).
Nobody else thinks so: She’s a girl! Even supportive Clarence and Harold, who admit she hits and fields better than they do, figure Fate has been stacked against her. But as Stone did in real life, young Marcenia refuses to be left out.
She’s inspired by multiple female characters — her mom, a math teacher, a nurse, even the moon — to run full-tilt at obstacles until she knocks them over. The versatile Lynn plays all these parts, giving each a slightly different physical and vocal quality. (I saw this play years ago in a workshop, where the distinctions weren’t as clear. Youngsters will have no difficulty following the plot now.)
Director James Webb gives the story energy by keeping it in constant motion, like Marcenia herself. The authors tell most of it in songs that stand above the run-of-the-mill stuff so often written to keep kids from getting bored with dialogue. “Quittin’ the Game Blues,” which Marcenia sings at her briefly lowest ebb, wouldn’t be out of place in a suave cabaret act.
“Catching the Moon” is part of Children’s Theatre’s long-running Kindness Project, a label so broad it can encompass almost anything the company does. It has frequently meant respect, tolerance and understanding directed at others. That’s here to some degree, both in Street’s eventual willingness to let Marcenia try out and her friends’ encouragement.
But kindness can also be inner-directed without degenerating into egomania or selfishness. Marcenia stubbornly refuses to ignore her own potential, because that would leave her an incomplete person.
“Do you always go where you’re not welcome?” Street asks, before finally accepting her. “No,” she replies. “But I go where I belong.” That’s an idea every kid ought to hear.
If You’re Going: “Catching the Moon” runs through March 24 at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays (also 4 p.m. March 17) at the Wells Fargo Playhouse in ImaginOn, 300 E 7th St., Charlotte. It’s aimed at ages 7 and up.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews about two times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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