PEAR SLICES 2025: Eight short (8 – 10 minutes each) plays written by Bay Area award-winning playwrights. The Pear Theatre, 1110 La Avenida, Suite A, Mountain View, CA 94043. (650) 254 – 1148. www.info@thepear.org. May 23 – June 6, 2025.
Pear Slices 2025 is a mix of humorous and serious short plays that are presented each year at Pear Theatre [rating:4] Each year Pear Theatre offers up a menu of eight short plays written by award-winning playwrights in the greater Bay Area.
This year’s production was directed by Jasmine Lew and Bryan Moriarty. Two of the best short plays were written by Bay Area playwright Paul Braverman. Other local playwrights who have short plays in this year’s Pear Slices are Sophie Naylor, Greg Lam, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Erin Panttaja, Enrique (Henri) Munoz and Cheriellyn Ferguson.
Max Mahle as The Wall in “A Mysterious Demise.” Photo by Tim Garcia.
In “A Mysterious Demise” by Braverman, there are so many egg-centric jokes because it’s about the mysterious demise of Humpty Dumpty who was sitting on a wall –- until he wasn’t. Vanessa Alvarez does a fine job of portraying hard-boiled (pardon the pun) detective, Jo Sunday, while Max Mahle portrays the wall from which Humpty Dumpty fell.
Jaime Melendez plays the scramble-brained Henny Penny while Stephen Sherwood is Sunday’s assistant.
In Braverman’s other short play, “Deuce Cooper: Full House,” he brings back some familiar characters, Deuce played with masculine panache by Dave Leon and later by Alvarez as Donna Cooper. It’s a convoluted story of protecting a witness (Guy Debalizi played by Sherwood) who may or may not be dead (he keeps falling over, but apparently still has a pulse). Mahle plays Officer Ross while Jaime Melendez is Flo Ebbs.
“Occupied” by Greg Lam is a funny take on the situation when there is only one bathroom in a building. It’s labeled for he’s and she’s – and it’s occupied. Leon is hilarious as the guy who really, REALLY has to pee, while the voice behind the located door is Sherwood. Sherwood insists that he also has to go – but the more he tries, the less happens. This short has a surprise ending, which won’t be revealed here.
Ferguson is the playwright of “Fair Play,” which has promise but still needs some work to make it a complete. Delaney Bantillo plays the clerk at the “Marriage Bureau” as well as Friar Lawrence, while Mahle as Juliet, Sherwood as Romeo and Leon as the Bard himself round out the cast of this shor
Several of the other shorts (“Probably Not a Bag of Ears” by Naylor, “”Stargazers” by Portman, “Rossum’s Robot Truckers” by Panttaja and “Not in America” by Munoz) show promise but still need work to make them stand out.
“Pear Slices 2025” runs approximately 1 hour, 45 minute including a 15-minute intermission.
CAST: Vanessa Alvarez, Delaney Bantillo, Dave Leon, Max Mahle, Jaime Mellendez, Stephen Sherwood, Allison Starr. :
ARTISTIC STAFF: Directors: Jasmine Lew and Bryan Moriarty; Stage and Production Manager: Kelly Weber Barraza; Producer: Robyn Ginsburg Braverman; Assistant Stage Manager: Bella Campos Hintzman; Sound Design: Carsten Koester; Set Design: Louis Stone-Collonge.
Joanne Engelhardt is a former San Jose Mercury and Santa Cruz Sentinel writer and theatre critic and is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: joanneengelhardt@comcast.net.