Jennifer Chung Klam

San Diego Arts

'Everything Will Be Different' at Lynx Performance Theatre

'Tragedy is so beautiful...'
By Jennifer Chung Klam
Posted on Fri, Nov 7th, 2008
Last updated Fri, Nov 14th, 2008

Getting through the awkward and sometimes painful years of adolescence is hard enough. For Charlotte, self-doubt and confusion are compounded by the death of her mother and her father’s inability to cope with the loss. Lynx Performance Theatre’s current production of Mark Schultz’s 2005 play “Everything Will Be Different” is an intense, if disturbing, portrayal of the potentially damaging effects of such loss on a young mind.

Michelle Procopio gives a devastatingly potent performance, building palpable tension between Charlotte and her emotionally numbed and heavily inebriated father. Their inability to communicate beyond blame, threats and bitterness frames their difficult, abusive relationship.

As the father, Bill Kehayias spends the majority of the play slumped over in a recliner, almost too tired to interact at all with his daughter – beyond repeatedly telling her that she will never be pretty like her mother. The casting of Procopio, clearly fortunate in the attractiveness department, adds more layers to notions of beauty, our obsession with it, and how it can be used as a weapon.

Lost and alone, Charlotte retreats into a fantasy world where beauty, fame and desire propel her to place of safety and control – two things missing in her life.

She identifies with the story of Helen of Troy, specifically with the daughter left behind when Helen was abducted, but also the destructive power of Helen’s beauty. In Charlotte’s fantasy, she destroys the men around her through seduction and sex.

Director Al Germani uses videos projected above the stage to fill in some of these fantasies, with Alicia Randolph as Charlotte’s younger self and Joan Westmoreland as best friend Heather. The young Randolph and older Westmoreland represent the clash between Charlotte’s lack of experience and her yearning to be an adult. In her desperate attempts to force maturity, Charlotte does unfortunate and deplorable things.

Walter Ritter does excellent work as Charlotte’s guidance counselor, unwillingly locked in a potentially career-killing game with his unbalanced student. Kevin Koppman-Gue garners sympathy as Charlotte’s slightly geeky but otherwise well-adjusted friend, and Joshua Manley’s belligerent, arrogant jock character reflects an unsavory honesty with the high school experience.

Germani stages the play with little fuss – bare lighting, minimal sets and props. The focus is entirely on these fragile, broken characters, who often address the audience rather than each other.

A psychotherapist by vocation, Germani again takes audiences on an unsettling journey often difficult to watch. Themes of physical and sexual abuse, pornography, alcoholism, disconnection to reality and mental illness infect Schultz’s intense play. While most of us have probably escaped this kind of extreme adolescent nightmare, there’s a good chance that pieces of it will feel uncomfortably recognizable.

“Everything Will Be Different,” especially in Lynx’s spare and emotionally demanding production, is not for everyone. It is likely to be tortuous to some, offensive to others, and perhaps deeply satisfying to those with a willingness and desire to look into the dark recesses of the human psyche.

About the author: Jennifer Chung Klam is an editor at The Daily Transcript and a freelance arts and culture writer.
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