“Wood for the Trees is a magical visual experience created by four highly skilled performers – the action is compelling from start to finish with some achingly poignant moments in between. Don’t miss it.”
Caroline Smart, www.artsmart.co.za Review, July 2005

“Experimenting with sound, shadow puppetry and various props, the actors (Rob van Vuuren, Helen Iskander, James Cuningham, and Gys De Villiers) address the audience directly as they tell the story of the "man from the trees". It is as innovative as theatre gets.”
Tonight.co.za

“… an imaginative amalgam of striking visual and sound effects, physical theatre and mime techniques.
There is much that is ingenious and arresting. To start, the utility and pleasing economy of the design – by Gerhard Marx, Chantelle Cairns and Leigh Nudelman – allows for freeze frames of striking beauty.
If these bring early black-and-white cinema to mind, then the various sound effects – footsteps, pebbles being thrown, etc. – have the fun of the old-time radio-drama recording.
Indeed, genre is piled upon genre in what becomes a multimedia extravaganza.
Photographic studio white umbrellas stand in for the undulating countryside; act as the medium for some shadow play and deliberately rough-hewn shadow puppetry; and sometimes are simply umbrellas.
Playing with scale, a hallmark of Fresco Theatre – whose James Cuningham and Helen Iskander perform here – is very much in evidence, in the paper-and-wire figures that the cast manipulate.
Bouffier, who is unnamed, is rendered by a hat and jacket operated by the cast. It’s apt for so elusive – and silent – a character.
Silence is not key to Wood for the Trees – talking, or shouting, heads ensure that – but there are moments of exquisite stillness, and assured mime and physical articulation, the province of the Fresco duo.”
Darryl Accone, Cue review, July 2005