Kindertransport . . . strange title - why German? These were very special children, and this was very special transport - transportation, almost. Diane Samuels, whose play runs at the Playhouse all week, deals with one of the last - and one of the most immediately moving - episodes in the desperate history of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

All through the 1930s, there was a steady flight westwards, to Britain and the US, mainly of those with money, sponsorship or a career to go to; every sphere of arts or science was enriched by their presence. By 1938, fresh victimisation and savagely increasing pressure in Hitler's Germany led to this extraordinary enterprise whereby young children were sent, alone, to safety in Britain. Into the arms of strangers . . .

A terrifying experiment, but overtaken so rapidly by the greater terror and urgency of war that its profound sociological and personal implications were not generally dwelt upon. Were these children orphans, refugees, or just lucky? Had they no memory of another world, another faith? Could they - should they - have acquired a new identity? Certainly, the lot of the parents who had sacrificed the unity of their family and their deepest happiness for a hope in the future was brutish and short. The children had no past to recapture.

Samuels has enjoyed worldwide success with her play, written in 1993. She focuses on a single case, a little girl, Eva, who comes to England aged ten and is taken in by a kind, simple family in Manchester. Several stages of her life are shown successively and sometimes simultaneously in parallel stage areas: her German mother and home, her journey and life with Lil, her fostermother; and her own life as mother of Faith, her nearly grown-up daughter.

Thoroughly anglicised, she has hidden her own history in the attic in old letters and books, which Faith finds and precipitates searing revelations. This is, obviously, a limited mother-and-daughter view, with lots of recrimination and no resolution.

It's in the always-reliable hands of Shared Experience and their remarkable director Polly Teale, with a rather tidy attic set by Jonathan Fensom and perfect period costumes ranging over generations and nationalities by Caroline Francis. Eileen O'Brien is an excellent Lil and Matti Houghton (pictured right) grows from ten to 17 very prettily. Lily Bevan is a contemporary Faith, while Pandora Colin is outstanding as the cool, poised Jewish mother Helga. Marion Bailey in the pivotal part of Evelyn sometimes rattled her lines.

My sympathies were all with Alexi Kaye Campbell as the all-purpose male - train guard, border inspector, postman, but mostly as the Ratcatcher, personification of a medieval ogre, symbol of the fearful unknown, doomed to pass the play writhing or looming around, groping and grasping in his sinister black cloak.

Kindtertransport continues at the Oxford Playhouse until tomorrow. Box office: 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).