LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Mother Teresa claimed, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”

In the disturbing and poignant Lake County Theatre Co. production of Daniel Keyes' “Flowers for Algernon,” the rapt audience is painfully taken to this place of destitution, while tantalized with the hope of love and acceptance.

Most may remember the story from their middle or high school English class.

Charlie, a cognitively impaired young man in Brooklyn who is happily employed as a bakery delivery boy and cleaner, is chosen by a medical research team to undergo an experimental surgery to have his low intelligence dramatically and seemingly permanently increased, like the team's laboratory mouse Algernon.

Soon able to devour “War and Peace” in an evening, Charlie's intellectual capacity soars while his simple desire to be loved and accepted becomes more and more remote.

Tim Fischer and Tim Barnes trade off the roles of arrogant professor and willing guinea pig to great effect.

Blinded by ambition and success, like the designers of the Titantic, Fischer's Professor Nemur boasts that “Nothing can go wrong.” His hubris bristles the audience's sensibilities, representing the modern theme of science without morality or conscience.

The driven hardness and scientific aloofness Fischer's character symbolizes, and that of Charlie's embarrassed and ashamed mother, acted jarringly by Suna Flores, are counterpoised by the kindness and concern of lab assistant Burt Seldon and Charlie's teacher and love interest, Alice Kinnian. These two roles, smashingly performed by Cameron Beighle and Laura Barnes respectively, provide the kindness and camaraderie that may truly be all that Charlie really needs.

They also provide the virtually traumatized audience, aching for Charlie's lonely plight as he self-proclaims “That's a man in torment!,” with the promise goodness and friendship afford.

Like so many of our own lives as we grow older and a bit wiser, the clarity of our life's desires and purpose can be lost in our failures and unfulfilled expectations.

Barnes' Charlie tastes love momentarily, but the audience watches horrified, knowing it cannot last but fleeting moments. His frenetic urge to understand his past treatment by family and friends as a mentally challenged boy haunts him.

Under Carol Dobusch's direction, a series of flashbacks of Charlie's childhood and adolescence, courtesy of young players Cotton Andrade and Chance Andrade (Maurice Bingdom and Will McCauley in alternate performances) masterfully allows the audience a truly disturbing opportunity to walk in the shoes of the “retarded.”

For this viewer, the painful identifications with stereotyping, bullying and valuing a person for what they could be in your eyes as opposed to simply who and what they already are, rocks you and challenges you to discover where you land on the empathy and kindness scale.

This is not a production for the faint of heart. There is no escapism here, but there is an amazing opportunity to see art scream – to face multiple ethical and moral themes: man's efforts to play God, the nature of happiness, the acceptance of ourselves against the perceptions of others and imagined expectations of ourselves.

Not since I saw Sean O'Casey's “Shadow of a Gunman” in Dublin's Abbey Theatre have I left a theater so racked with emotion, so unsettled by a performance.

Dobusch's Lake County players provide an impressive chance and need to unwind and converse after the show, decompressing with what Charlie needed most – kindness and connection, and in this reviewer's case, a hearty pint of beer.

Catch the final performances this weekend at Gard Street Elementary, 3980 Gard St., in Kelseyville, 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

Tickets may be purchased at Cheese's Game Shop in Lakeport or on the Lake County Theatre Co.'s Web site, http://www.lakecountytheatrecompany.org/ .