The lack of closure or dramatic tension displayed in the five narratives at the center of “Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise,” which opened last night at the Culture Project, would be crippling to most productions. That director-creator Yael Farber and her skilled quintet of South African performers manage to transcend this central flaw is a testament to their professionalism and acute emotional honesty.

The stories are harrowing accounts of growing up in apartheid-era South Africa.Though they zero in on specific, noticeably similar incidents and are effective chapters to what presumably could become gripping stories of life as a marginalized majority, they are devoid of the ingredients that typically constitute compelling drama.

But by blending rapturous vocals and often ingenious movement into these deeply personal narratives (“Amajuba,” which has toured extensively since its 2000 debut, is revised any time a role is recast in order to absorb the new performer’s personal recollections), Ms. Farber creates a largely engrossing whole out of the show’s sometimes paltry parts.

In the first of the stories, a penniless township girl (Bongeka Mpongwana) finds herself abandoned first by her parents and then by her older sister. In another, Roelf Matlala plays a young man of mixed parentage (“In South Africa, that made me one broken law after another”) who suffers the beatings of a racist teacher. The third story, told through the eyes of Phillip “Tipo” Tindisa as the family’s designated peacemaker, also involves an absentee parent, and the next focuses on a young woman (Jabulile Tshabalala) who does the abandoning herself.

The alternately exuberant and mournful music of South Africa’s township songs is a crucial component of all five stories. Ms. Farber enlivens the vast majority of “Amajuba”with a marvelous collection of them, performed in stirring four- and five-part harmony.All five performers acquit themselves impressively, juggling these musical assignments with the play’s strenuous acting requirements, but Tshallo Chokwe and the silver-toned Ms. Mpongwana are first among equals.

Mr. Chokwe’s coiled passion is also in display as he narrates the final tale, about a timid boy who finds confidence through his association with a liberation group. Only in this story do apartheid-era politics explicitly enter the narratives; if not for the highly evocative township songs, the rest of the play could come from any land scarred by poverty and racial discord.

The last tale also relies on the most intricate vocals and choreography; its stirring, harmonically dense material finds a visual analogue in Ms. Farber’s entrancing use of movement. The sight of a boy first swimming underwater and then on the surface is conveyed entirely through body language, as is a boisterous game of soccer. A nightmare is depicted through nothing more than the sight of a man unable to free himself from his own shirt. And there’s a beautiful image of two sisters parting ways: Standing on either end of a blanket held between them, they wave to each other, one facing forward, the other backward. (Until the very end, the show’s props are confined to 10 enamel bowls, a few larger basins, and a small handful of other items.)

These inspired moments complement the energetic visual style Ms. Farber employs throughout “Amajuba.” On the rare occasions in which any of the actors are not in a specific scene, they move to the periphery and drop into the sort of crouch more often seen at the beginning of a track meet. This constant physical momentum — also reflected by Mr. Tindisa’s eager-to-please young boy, who literally sprints between his mother and father at opposite sides of the stage — is exciting to watch, but it also throws into sharper relief the relative dearth of dramatic action within the stories.

Perhaps aware of this, Ms. Farber and her actors try to compensate by concluding the evening with a series of “life lessons” accumulated since these horrific childhood tales. Unfortunately, the lessons prove clichéd and toothless: “We all need to stand in the rain and wash away the pain.” “Amajuba” drags a bit near the end, and these tales would be prime candidates for excision.

Far more effective is a series of haunting final images involving sand and water, an elemental, almost primal visual corollary to the simplicity of the individual tales. Without giving too much away, these images conclude “Amajuba” with a purgative, soothing force that trumps any of the accompanying nostrums. This hard-won and (literally) enveloping reverie cannot undo the slight narratives that preceded it, but it goes a long way toward redeeming them.

Until August 27 (45 Bleecker St. at Lafayette Street, 212-307-4100).