Flight, violence, suicide and myths concerning the vanities and deaths of birds. It sounds arty, and it is. Isobel Cohen’s Kind works a very particular, very disturbing kind of magic.

The play follows the narrative of a damaged family diving towards disintegration in the claustrophobic, intense atmosphere of Dùbhglas Island. Skildir McLeod (Rosie Skan) is a young inhabitant of the sparsely populated isle who is oppressed by the vanity of her stepfather, Diarrad Mcleod (Tom Stuchfield) and the needs of a mother (Emily Dance) who has been unable to produce fit and mentally healthy children after the child of her first marriage. Skildir, between her obligations to her family and her ache for freedom, becomes infatuated with Sùlar, a visiting ornithologist.

The enclosed atmosphere of the Corpus Playroom forces the audience into an intense relationship with the visuality of the play. Puppets, interpretive dance, and a moveable set constructed from tables and ladders gave the imagination much to play with. The opening scene depicted the death of one husband and the entrance of another worked through music and carefully sensual interpretive dance. The bird puppets were made from bits and pieces such as cloths and other household objects used throughout the play. They worked through sound and movement, and the voices of their controllers.

The daughters, however, deserve a paragraph all of their own. Skildir’s six sisters as designed by Connie Harper were as melancholy as they were disturbing. The combined voices and expressions of their controllers, Catriona Stirling and Amy Howlett gave them a damning, raucous presence as the play reaches its most cathartic moments. The sense of otherness reflected by the bird myths which blend the brutal worlds of the human and the natural is accentuated by their ominous presence as the inevitable reason for family breakdown, while insinuating at the products of a tiny island perpetuated by incest.

Emily Dance gave a particularly poignant and moving performance as a mother pushed towards a brink, while Tom Stuchfield’s Diarrad McLeod verged on over-acting; however his intense movements and looks insinuated violence which heightened scenes of domestic tension. Violence and self-violence also winds its way through the language, heavy with insinuation such as "Eight spoons, eight forks, no knives", leaving us no doubt as to why Kind won the prestigious 2012 Marlowe/RSC ‘Other’ Prize. This potential for harm is emphasised visually though the rickety precipice of a cliff constructed out of precarious ladders; Jackson Caines shows great resilience perching on this for an entire twenty minutes.

Some glitches robbed the play of excellence. A forgotten line had to be supplied by the director, while one of the Playroom speakers rendered the words of a godlike, deus-ex-machina moment almost inaudible. Moments of amusement seemed to confuse an audience who were unprepared to laugh. However, when these are rubbed through and the slightly stilted delivery smoothed over, this play will be rather wonderful. It keeps the audience perched like birds, intense and waiting for characters edging closer and closer to a precipice to fall.