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...