One would easily peg Rhea, a looming, witch-like matriarch who can haunt both your dreams and reality, as the central villain of Birds, now being staged by Rorschach Theater. But the piece has another, more abstract source of fear and genuine creepiness — a haunted Manhattan itself, where magic makes an unwelcome appearance.

In this New York, a vagrant can take your fortune along with your coat, and the loss of a lock of hair could mean the loss of your luck, even your life. It's a city from which there's no real escape — cabs hailed by stockbroker Jorie and a hooker known only as "A" never quite make it past the five boroughs. It's a spookiness made all the more palpable by designer Jacob Muehlhausen's looming, black and white skyscraper set, and a beginning and an ending spiked with the sound effects and shadowy visuals of a 30s melodrama.

Birds succeeds more on an impressionistic level than a literal one. The Rorschach company consistently invokes a feeling of uneasiness throughout the work — we're never quite sure about the reliability of our narrator, Jorie (Jjanna Valentiner), or whether to fully trust the charming but creepy Gus (a wry, winning Brian Hemmingsen), who may or may not be a mere homeless man. Its actors also warm us to less than endearing characters — prime examples include Nanna Ingvarsson, who plays Rhea as self-aware Norma Desmond with a touch of the sardonic, and Tim Getman, who makes us feel for snobby, superficial James even at his most offensive moments.

But examine the text too closely, and things are a bit less satisfying. The plot, vaguely, is about the damaged Jorie, who has escaped to some degree from a horrific childhood she won't tell us much about. She and James are in a moderately happy but notably non-trusting relationship, when their fates begin to become intertwined, and then reversed, with Gus and his friend, a hooker (a lithe, saucy Marissa Molnar). Themes can be a little too obvious (people give the homeless money out of guilt? Shocking!) and plot elements can be at times, inscrutable. Jennifer Maisel's script can suffer from flowery, self-indulgent dialog, most of which falls to Getman to deliver as realistically as possible. And while the work's revelatory conclusion is staged startlingly and brilliantly, the explanations that follow are far too expository, particularly for a work so often shrouded in mystery.

Flaws aside, Birds intrigues far more frequently than it confounds. The work runs through July 29 at The Sanctuary Theater, and is the company's contribution to the upcoming Capital Fringe Festival. Tickets are available online.