The play tells the little known story of the sinking of The City of Benares, a ship torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1940 with nearly 100 British school children on board. The children were en route to Canada, where their parents had sent them as part of a government scheme to protect children from air raids. If you're thinking this doesn't sound like a play for your kindergartner, you'd be right. However the two-actress show is also a touching tale of the enduring friendship that grew between two girls as they clung to an overturned lifeboat together and went on to become two of only 13 survivors of the terrible ordeal.

In spite of its heavy theme, the play's target audience is young people, from ages 10 up, and it hits that target squarely. The kids in the audience opening night were riveted for the entire 70 minutes, as were the adults. There is no beating around the bush: from the first moments of the show, we are launched headlong into the shipwreck, which is created effectively with movement, a versatile set, sounds, lighting, and powerful storytelling. Flashback sequences take us back and forth between the terrified girls trying to stay alive in the stormy waters, and the events and people that brought them to this point. What is perhaps most remarkable is how joyously the two actresses tell the story. There is no foreboding, no minor key, no melodrama: these are two 14-year-olds (played by twenty-somethings) who love their parents, love adventure, and love that new summer blockbuster The Wizard of Oz.

Most American children (and many adults, for that matter) don't realize that the war years for European families meant years of relentless air raids - particularly in major cities like London. Lifeboat's 70 minutes of drama in the Wallis Annenberg's intimate Lovelace Studio Theater draws a picture for the audience of what it was like to live with air raid sirens, how children felt hiding in a shelter all night with their neighbors, and the dilemmas parents faced in keeping their children safe. The show offers a healthy dose of how much harder childhood used to be (iPhone issues pale by comparison), but without hammering the point. The girls seem to have no complaints; they love their lives but recognize, for different reasons, the wisdom of going to Canada. And it is, after all, an awfully big adventure.

There is no question that the themes of Lifeboat are chilling, but they are real, and the show presents heroines whose hard-won victory we can applaud. There were tears in the audience, but those tears were - frankly - all in the eyes of adults. As parents, we can't help but think of how difficult it would be to put our children on that boat, and the unimaginable pain of the parents whose children didn't return. I definitely hugged my boy closer that night. But the children in the audience were all focused on the survival; that's the beauty of childhood.

After every performance, the two actresses come out for a discussion, which is particularly appreciated after the emotional journey they've just led. They're well prepared to answer kids' questions about the real women (who participated in the creation of the original production), about their rehearsal process, about what certain parts mean, about what they're thinking at given moments - even about what happened to the Germans in the attacking U-boat. Catherine Wheels regularly performs the piece for schools (and has been doing so this week in LA), so the actresses are quite used to managing age-appropriate discussion of the historical event. My own 'tween listened intently and was impacted enough to discuss the events of the play fairly deeply on the drive home. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Lifeboat's remaining LA performances are Sat & Sun 3/21-3/22, 12 noon & 2:30pm. There are also weekday matinees (predominantly for school groups), but those are sold out.

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