In Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” he wrote “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

That iconic line jumped into my head when I saw David Dwyer’s set for Kinder Transport,  presented by the Jewish Repertory Theatre until February 25. The setting is a sparse attic in a London home and there is indeed light splintering in between the wall boards. This subtle effect is sometimes the pale blue of twilight or the fiery yellow-orange of morning. Lighting designer Brian Cavanagh’s statement here is elegant in its simplicity: light is sometimes comforting and sometimes scorching. There are other things in this attic, too: boxes of home goods, and toys, and some long forgotten memories that are poised to change lives all over again. Sometimes soothing. Sometimes scorching.

Playwright Diane Samuels’ story is based on a terrifying time in world history: in the earliest days of the Third Reich, parents put nearly 10,000 children on trains to Great Britain to escape Hitler’s terror. They were welcomed into private homes or orphanages to live out the war. Few were reunited with their families. Most had to rebuild their lives with new families.

Kinder Transport is Eva’s story, beautifully played by Renee Landrigan, as she leaves her German mother (Charmagne Chi in an absolutely amazing performance) to live with Lil Miller (also amazing Ellen Horst) in London. The storytelling shifts from 1939 to the 1970s, where Lil and her adult daughter Evelyn (Wendy Hall) are nudging Evelyn’s 20-something daughter Faith (Robyn Baun) toward independence. Sorting through the attic and its boxes of glassware and toys is part of the process of embracing change and holding tight to the familiar.

Simply put: the storytelling is brilliant and the acting is impeccable. Well cued lighting visually amplified key moments in the story, and with this breathtaking cast, that was all that was needed to convey every moment of power, wisdom, loneliness, family secrets, fear, and hope that is woven into this script.

Landrigan grows from a nine year old who only wants her storybook and her mother’s love to a teenager who assimilates into a new culture. While I generally don’t care for adults playing children, Landrigan is charming and fidgety and pouty in her pigtails, as she resists learning how to sew (“How else will the buttons get onto the coat?” chides her German mother.) and resolute when she has more challenging adult decisions to make.

Chi as her Eva’s mother is strong, determined to hide her fear from her daughter, as handily as she hid precious jewelry in her daughter shoes before her long trip. If you’ve seen Chi in her more prevalent comedic shows, you will marvel at her in this intense role. Awesome is an understatement: Chi’s performance was breathtaking and world class.

Horst pours quiet confidence into her Lil: she’s assuredly doing the right thing by welcoming young Eva into her home and making life decisions that brought her a new life. She is solid, dignified, yet vulnerable and it’s very special to watch. There’s nothing like a grandmother’s – and mother’s love – when it comes to bringing solace and focus, and Horst is the perfect vessel for these messages.

Hall has a lot of sharp edges as Faith’s mother. She’s determined that her daughter leave home and take the good glassware and leave the childhood toys behind. Hall manages this beautifully as her story reveals itself in careful layers. It’s poignant and telling that Samuels chose the name Faith for the daughter, which gives Evelyn depth and humanity.

It’s Baun as Faith senses something while searching that attic, and her instinct is spot on. She’s looking for answers in all those antic boxes without knowing the questions. Baun captures this with an exquisite curiosity about her family’s story. Watch the careful gaze in her eyes as she glances between the generations in that attic. It’s the subtle moments like these where the sheer magic of these actors and Saul Elkin’s direction coalesce into something powerful and lingering. Another one of these moments is when Eva wears the gold jewelry that she smuggled from home: it’s deliberately a little oversized to give the illusion of adult jewelry on a little girl’s neck.

David Wysocki rounds out the cast in a round robin of roles, from Nazi officer on the train to the harried British processor at the train station, trying to telling young Eva that her new foster mother is running late as he laments, “What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.”

This one stayed with me long after I left the theatre. While I over-thought some holes in the Samuels’ storytelling, I kept coming back to what was there, so powerfully there. Family secrets can be painful. World history isn’t remote when it’s your story, too. People are resolute and resilient, even when they are most vulnerable.

Kinder Transport runs two hours with a brief intermission until February 25. Visit https://www.jccbuffalo.org/jewish-repertory-theatre/ for tickets.