For the most part, critics in Hare's native Britain recognized The Secret Rapture as a clever attempt at a modern tragedy, set squarely against the social and economic impact of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decade-long term of office in the 1980s. They generally praised the work for both its political commentary and its intimate, personal storytelling.

Writing for the Sunday Times just after the play opened in London, John Peter declared, "Hare has written one of the best English plays since the war and established himself as the finest British dramatist of his generation. The Secret Rapture is a family play; it is also the first major play to judge the England of the 1980s in terms that are both human and humane."

In the Observer, Michael Ratcliffe observed, "Hare's painful, witty, and moving new play The Secret Rapture is a morality of modern behavior in...