In the following review, New Yorker drama critic Gibbs offers a mild endorsement for the expanded stage production of Vidal's television play.

There is enough material in A Visit to a Small Planet, by Gore Vidal, for roughly an hour and a half of fine, fantastic comedy. It is somewhat unfortunate that the play at the Booth is obliged to go on for about fifty minutes longer than that, forcing the author to fill in this considerable gap either by stretching out genuinely comic situations almost to the breaking point or by writing in scenes that seem to contain rather less humor than desperation. The extra stuffing, presumably to be explained by the fact that the script is an expansion of one that was originally employed on television, is frequently irritating, but it isn't really calamitous, and I'm sure that you'll have a very pleasant time with...