ONE of the great joys of The Courtyard is the opportunity it affords to experience some truly outstanding work, work that may not be streamed live to millions on the big screen - though it should be - and which has the power to stop you in your tracks.

And last week, Pipeline Theatre delivered just such a piece in Transports, an intricately and cleverly constructed drama which draws you in to the story being played out on stage at the same time as it tells stories on an altogether bigger scale.

Inspired by the story of designer Alan Munden's mother Liesl, who was on one of the last Kindertransports to England during the war, Transports starts with another arrival on a train, as 15-year-old Dinah comes to live with Lotte. Dinah is trouble - 'bad' she insists, countering any attempt on Lotte's part to contradict her, and she's got all the ammunition to prove it. Rude and silent by turns, Dinah is already damaged beyond repair, but that can't stop us hoping that Lotte's eccentrically sensitive care will win her over. And the two have more in common than Dinah imagines and her mockery turns to a glimmer of empathy when she discovers Lotte's past packed away in a trunk.

It's a measure of how powerfully Transports affected the audience that the lights going up for the interval were greeted with a stunned silence. Similarly the end was met with silence for a beat or two, as if we needed to distance ourselves from a story that had felt heartbreakingly real before applauding the company that had brought it to life.

Just two actors - Juliet Welch and Hannah Stephens - were on stage, inhabiting women of different generations, Juliet playing Lotte, Mrs Weston and Lotte's mother, while Hannah was Dinah and the young Lotte, every one clearly and convincingly characterised, with the transitions beautifully effected to highlight the echoes resonating through the years.

Contained in a simple set, with only two actors, the story told sparingly with not a word wasted as it inexorably moves towards its devastating conclusion, Transports is a tragedy that stays in the mind for days.

Next month it heads to London, but there is another opportunity, and I'd urge everyone to see it, to catch Transports locally, at Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury on Tuesday, March 15.