Review: TRANSPORTS, Pleasance Theatre, March 1 2016

It's 1973 and Dinah is a mardy, smoking-behind-the-bikesheds fifth-former, in and out of foster homes and discovering that she has power over boys - though not as much as she thinks. Lotte has lost her husband and is full of good intentions - and loneliness - and she recognises something in Dinah from her own life. This pair are ill-matched indeed: both have lots to say, but the girl won't communicate and the woman can't communicate.

In Pipeline Theatre's beautiful, moving, wistful Transports (at the Pleasance Theatre until 12 March and on tour) we learn about the damage done by parents abandoning their children: Dinah by as a result of "circumstances" (though we are told that her mother was young and Irish in the late 50s and so we do have some inclination of what they might be); the other, Lotte, as a girl on the Kindertransport out of Nazi Germany into an uncomprehending England. We also learn a more universal truth about how decency and a strong commitment to help another may not be enough if one cannot create an environment that works - it's the fate of all parents of teenagers to a lesser or greater extent.

If that all sounds a bit worthy, a bit preachy, well, that aspect of the production only really emerges on reflection, because the play as drama is completely engaging from start to (surprise) finish. Designer Alan Munden (on whose mother some of the story is based) has constructed an elegantly spare set with two vertical train tracks and a little sitting room, and it's used to suggest a variety of locations and also to underline the play's leitmotif of travel. For some of us, the authentic sound of Tony Blackburn's Radio One Breakfast Show made for a Proustian rush of nostalgia too.

For all that attention to detail and Jon Welch's pin-sharp script, two-hour two-handers like this only work if the actors are totally committed to the roles. Juliet Welch is utterly credible as both 1973's Lotte and 1939's Mrs Weston, the young Lotte's English host, doing her best work with the little hesitations and then accelerations of speech and movement that say everything about her nervousness and desire to do the right thing. Hannah Stephens also excels in two very different roles. She gets the sulk and the stance perfectly for damaged Dinah in 1973 and, transformed by a headscarf and glasses, captures poor Lotte in 1939 with uncanny accuracy.

Despite the often distressing subject matter, these two very fine performances give us four rounded people who provoke plenty of empathy in us for all their faults as their stories parallel themselves (like the train tracks) at 34 years distance. It very rarely happens for me at the end of 120 minutes in the stalls, but I really wanted another half-hour to find out how they were faring in 2016 (or, better still, a full sequel).

If many coming to see a play like this will know about the Kindertransport that saved so many Jewish kids from The Holocaust, then that knowledge hardly matters - for this is a play about displacement and loss, themes that resonate today, as we face new challenges from more conflicts with more innocents running scared into (one can only hope) the mercy of strangers.

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