Since the premiere of The Insect Play in 1922, the play has not been performed often, but it does appear every couple of decades. The demands of staging the Capeks’ insect world are the primarily reason that it is only occasionally produced. Critics’ reaction to the play has changed over time.

When the play was first produced in the United States in 1922 (as The World We Live In), John Corbin of the New York Times discussed the contemporary parallels that it was meant to evoke. Corbin included the impact of World War I and how Central European writers like the Capeks were perceived at the time. While Corbin believed that ‘‘the impression persists that it is all rather a libel on the insects,’’ later in the review, he stated ‘‘the insects who thus represent the world are . . . but a travesty conceived in the spirit of the wartime.’’

Robert Allerton Parker of the Independent shared Corbin’s mixed feelings about this production. Calling the play ‘‘puerile,’’ Parker believed The Insect Play was only staged because of its Central European origins. Writers from that part of the world were in vogue, leading Parker to speculate that if an American had written it, no producer would have touched it. Parker faulted the Capeks for ‘‘this failure . . . to organize their theme with any notable dramatic efficiency. This failure, it seemed to me, was the inevitable result of a confusion of thought and intention. Were they aiming to expose the human traits in insects? Or were they revealing the entomic vices of humans?’’

The Insect Play made its London debut in May 1923 under that name at the Regent Theatre. Francis Birrell of The Nation [and] the Athenaeum shared some of Parker’s concerns. Though Birrell called the production ‘‘rare and refreshing fruit’’ as well as it one of the best plays he had seen in London, he had problems with it as well. He wrote, ‘‘They have, up to a point, sympathetic minds. . . . There is a gritty disillusion about their reactions which has enabled them to produce a far more healthy entertainment than is usually seen on the London stage. But one cannot help feeling they have got muddled about their aims.’’

The Insect Play did not have the same impact in the post-World War II period as it did in the post- World War I era. In 1948, another production was put on in New York City under the name The Insect Comedy, which also received mixed reviews. A New York Times critic wrote ‘‘what seems to have struck another generation as powerfully interesting theatre, as profound wisdom and searching analysis, now seems only interesting. . . . What it had to say probably matters more than how it said it and its sentiments could easily have echoed in the minds and hearts of a world attempting to recover its balance.’’

Harold Clurman of the New Republic and John Gassner of Forum echoed these sentiments. Clurman believed the play’s sources—the post-World War I era and its problems—were key to understanding The Insect Play . Clurman wrote, ‘‘It represents the combination of despair and fury without any foundation in specific social understanding that inevitably paves the way to another war. The play is nevertheless justified by the fact that it does reflect an atmosphere created by a painfully real historical situation.’’ Gassner was one critic who believed the play was still ‘‘timely,’’ arguing that ‘‘this strangely moving, devastatingly satirical drama, born of postwar disillusionment, a play as timely today as it was in 1921...