Pier Players Theatre Company presents Peter Fenton’s I Think We’re Lost

Neverland and now

I Think We’re Lost is set both in Neverland and in modern real life, with settings including a college dorm room. Tyler Reppert’s scenic and projection design works beautifully in Theatre Exile’s space; a minimalistic ship’s frame grounds us in the fantasy realm and a floor-length screen at the back of the stage is used to project the other settings. Under director Madison Caudullo, the screen is used cleverly, at times casting shadow figures and also creating a sparkly, liminal world whenever Tinker Bell (the fabulous Vanessa Torres) sprinkles fairy dust and sends various characters on a journey between the worlds.

Credit on the technical team also goes to fight director Quentin J. Alexander, who choreographs some very tight fencing footwork for several fight scenes. The entire ensemble is energetic and well-suited to their roles. Torres is a standout performer, committed and strong in a wonderfully villainous take on Tink; she repeatedly sustains some of the play’s slower scenes.

Revisions required

Staging new work is important and can be exciting, but in this case, the play is not ready. I Think We’re Lost is imaginative but unfocused. It needs a few more rounds of revisions to tighten up the script. Fenton uses the Peter Pan framework to examine why some young men are reluctant to grow up, and also to challenge traditional gender roles through the lens of Peter (Joshua Srei Gold) and Wendy’s (Kate Brighter) relationship, including, in this version, a love triangle with their school friend James Hook (though Wendy is apparently unaware of his devotion).

Once in Neverland, Peter casts Wendy in a mother role which she eventually rejects, while Tink travels through time to capture lost boys to frolic with mermaids and play cards and video games with Peter. It’s not easy to successfully create a fantasy world on stage or in fiction; the rules of that world need to be consistent and grounded to help a reader or audience member make sense of it. One of this play’s deficits is that it’s not always clear how or why Tink needs to travel through time—landing in 2026—in order to find friends for Peter when there would likely be plenty of men from his own time in London who no doubt would be happy to release their adult responsibilities. How far into the future can she travel?

The play is loaded with exposition, including monologues that desperately need to be trimmed. Too often, Fenton’s characters describe their difficulty with belonging or feeling valued, instead of showing us their experiences through dramatic action. Several times, the characters have lines like “I need more context” or “this needs explanation”; if things are not clear to the characters in the play, it’s a sign the audience may be in the dark, too.

Fenton also struggles with when to lean into the comedic aspects of the script and when to slow down enough to allow real poignancy and authentic connection. In one instance, suicidal ideation is treated almost like a throwaway moment.

A hard and tender time

Pier Players would have served Fenton's play and their commitment to new work by engaging in a staged reading or two and a workshop process that could have helped him streamline and clarify his storyline. The play’s runtime is advertised as two hours plus intermission, which struck me as long for this type of show. Then it started late, and act two also ran late. Every time I thought the play was reaching its end, there was yet another scene.

It takes maturity as a writer to stick with draft after draft until your work is ready to be shared. I Think We’re Lost explores the time after college graduation when young people are figuring out where and how to fit into the adult world—such a hard and tender time—and I empathize with Fenton’s characters. But if he places them in Neverland to work through that complicated moment and to find their path into adulthood, they’re deserving of a coherent story.

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