PRESS
"...hilarious, darkly campy [...] If you like The Sound of Music, you're certain to get a kick out of [The Hills Are Alive!]."
- Suzy Evans, Backstage, 8/18/2012
"[Johnson] does an amazing job at creating a musical ambiance throughout and is masterful at what he does; so much so that you often forget that he’s the only musician present."
- Karen Tortora-Lee, review for The Cradle Will Rock, 2/27/2010
"Parody is a tricky art to pull off and The Hills Are Alive! deftly and hilariously succeeds at it. [...] This show is well crafted, well executed and very funny. You don’t need to know The Sound of Music well to get it or enjoy it. However, if you are a fan, this show is a special treat."
- Brian Gillespie, NYTheatre.com, 8/12/2012
"The Hills Are Alive! is the smart and delightful work of [...] composer Eric Thomas Johnson and lyricist/bookwriter Frankie Johnson. [...] It is a laugh riot that knows its source material inside and out, with many references that are sly fun, from glibly making mincemeat of 'Do Re Mi' with a convoluted teaching sing-along of its own about music to jibes about the teenage girl whose boyfriend turned out to be a Nazi."
- Rob Lester, Talkin' Broadway (Top Ten Cast Albums of 2012)
"Come for the squabbling siblings in braids and lederhosen, stay for the witty musical numbers..."
- David Kennerley, Gay City News (Top Ten Picks of FringeNYC 2012)
"Eric Thomas Johnson has done this incredible job of creating original music that has made the choral moments pop and move the story forward in a way that I don’t think the traditional chorus can do. The content is all intact, and very important, but the human element is so much more vibrant. Accordion, ukulele, guitar, melodeon, slide whistle, kazoo; the music enhances the play without distracting from it. What I have learned from the music and from this process is that what one is supposed to do as a director is to hire brilliant people and let them do the thing that they are brilliant at doing. ETJ’s ideas were never about him but about supporting the play and the company of actors communicating a story."
- Aaron Rossini, taken from an interview about Frogs in the New York Theatre Review, 10/24/2011