Oli Fuller
Suspenseful and spooky, David Alnwick’s The Dare Witch Project is a brilliant homage to the cult hit movie, The Blair Witch Project (1999).
The Dare Witch Project follows the story of David Alnwick finding footage that appears to be of himself on a camera he purchased on Ebay, where he appears to be performing a fan made challenge. His love of documentaries has led to him turning this into a documentary, created infront of a live audience.
In true free fringe fashion, David is operating all of the tech as well as performing. He performs a lot of the play from the tech box and operates the video himself, which adds to the true story element of the show. David’s passion for the documentary he is creating is beautifully neurodivergent and he is an absolutely excellent story teller.
To honour the acclaim The Blair Witch Project (1999) had through many peoples belief that it was real, the story was told as if it was completely true. My main criticism of this piece is that David re-itterated that this was definetly real so many times that it made it worked against him. It made the whole story less believable and therefore made the horror of it less horrifying. With all theatre the audience is expected to suspend their disbelief, but it was difficult to keep my disbelief suspended when we as the audience were reminded that that is what we are supposed to be doing so often.
Doing horror in theatre at all, let alone at the fringe, is difficult, but David excellently creates horror and suspense through theatre magic and recorded footage.
Recommended Drink: Pair this with a bottle of Water, and a back-up bottle incase you get lost in the woods.
You can catch David Alnwick: The Dare Witch Project until August 24th at Speakeasy at PBH’s Free Fringe @ Voodoo Rooms from 19:40 (55mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Jasmine Silk
Phoebe Bakker
Jake Mace
