{"id":109465,"date":"2025-05-27T15:52:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T22:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=109465"},"modified":"2025-05-27T15:52:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T22:52:57","slug":"pear-slices-2025-is-an-interesting-mix-of-humorous-and-serious-short-plays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/pear-slices-2025-is-an-interesting-mix-of-humorous-and-serious-short-plays\/","title":{"rendered":"Pear Slices 2025 is an interesting mix of humorous and serious short plays"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEAR SLICES <\/em><\/strong>2025: Eight short (8 \u2013 10 minutes each) plays written by Bay Area award-winning playwrights. <\/strong>The Pear Theatre, <\/strong>1110 La Avenida, Suite A, Mountain View, CA 94043<\/strong>. (650) <\/strong>254 \u2013 1148.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>www.<\/strong><\/a>info@thepear.org<\/u><\/strong>.<\/strong> May 23 \u2013 June 6, 2025. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Pear Slices 2025 <\/em><\/strong>is a mix of humorous and serious short plays that are presented each year at Pear Theatre [rating:4] <\/strong>Each year Pear Theatre<\/strong> \u00a0offers up a menu of eight short plays written by award-winning playwrights in the greater Bay Area.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>This year\u2019s 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\u2019s Pear Slices are Sophie Naylor, Greg Lam, Bridgette Dutta Portman, Erin Panttaja, Enrique (Henri) Munoz and Cheriellyn Ferguson.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Max Mahle as The Wall in \u201cA Mysterious Demise.\u201d Photo by Tim Garcia.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>In \u201cA Mysterious Demise\u201d by Braverman, there are so many egg-centric jokes because it\u2019s about the mysterious demise of Humpty Dumpty who was sitting on a wall \u2013- until he wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jaime Melendez plays the scramble-brained Henny Penny while Stephen Sherwood is Sunday\u2019s assistant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>In Braverman\u2019s other short play, \u201cDeuce Cooper: Full House,\u201d he brings back some familiar characters, Deuce played with masculine panache by Dave Leon and later by Alvarez as Donna Cooper. It\u2019s 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).\u00a0 Mahle plays Officer Ross while Jaime Melendez is Flo Ebbs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cOccupied\u201d by Greg Lam is a funny take on the situation when there is only one bathroom in a building.\u00a0 It\u2019s labeled for he\u2019s and she\u2019s \u2013 and it\u2019s occupied.\u00a0 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 \u2013 but the more he tries, the less happens.\u00a0 This short has a surprise ending, which won\u2019t be revealed here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Ferguson is the playwright of \u201cFair Play,\u201d which has promise but still needs some work to make it a complete. Delaney Bantillo plays the clerk at the \u201cMarriage Bureau\u201d 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<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Several of the other shorts (\u201cProbably Not a Bag of Ears\u201d by Naylor, \u201c\u201dStargazers\u201d by Portman, \u201cRossum\u2019s Robot Truckers\u201d by Panttaja and \u201cNot in America\u201d by Munoz) show promise but still need work to make them stand out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cPear Slices 2025\u201d runs approximately 1 hour, 45 minute including a 15-minute intermission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>CAST: Vanessa Alvarez, Delaney Bantillo, Dave Leon, Max Mahle, Jaime Mellendez, Stephen Sherwood, Allison Starr. :<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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:\u00a0joanneengelhardt@comcast.net.<\/em><\/p>\n

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PEAR SLICES 2025: Eight short (8 \u2013 10 minutes each) plays written by Bay Area award-winning playwrights. The Pear Theatre, 1110 La Avenida, Suite A, Mountain View, CA 94043. (650)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":2.5,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[841],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-109465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joanne-engelhardt"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"