Believing that aliens from another planet have arrived to invade the city, he had refused to help the drowning man's friend's attempts to save him and eventually goes stark raving mad.

[9] Ann Marie Demling wrote in 1983 that The Sea enjoyed popular and critical acclaim,[10] and that in the play, Bond "most clearly and articulately expresses a vision that was only suggested in The Pope's Wedding and Saved."

"[11] Ian Shuttleworth wrote for the Financial Times, "His comedy is frequently as broad as a 1970s television sitcom, and his passages of more profound comment tend to interrupt this silliness obtrusively rather than to sneak in under its Trojan-horse cover.

[12] Colin Dabkowski of The Buffalo News wrote, "For this particularly bleak brand of existentialist drama to sit side-by-side with such finely calibrated mannerist comedy is unusual but often thrilling.

[...] by placing haunting reflections on the experience of life in a dead-end seaside town in such proximity to slapstick comedy, Bond seems to be making a statement on the power of theater as an antidote to the void, or at least a distraction from it.

[14] Mark Ravenhill called Mrs Raffi "terrifyingly hilarious [...] ruling a small seaside community with an iron fist and an acid tongue.

[17] Susannah Clapp called it "both magnificent and a mess [...] it's not an indictment of a play which is both a picture of a world on the point of destruction and a satire on the British social set-up to say that it doesn't hang together: does King Lear exactly cohere?

"[1] Paul Levy of The Wall Street Journal (reviewing Kent's production) criticized the play as lacking coherence, but found the hymn-singing at the funeral "gloriously funny", and praised the performances of Atkins, Haig, and Marcia Warren.

Toronto Star's Richard Ouzounian wrote that the "writing throughout is brilliantly witty, yet savagely political", and that the "battered old rum-pot [offers] some astonishingly valid philosophical views of the universe" near the ending.

"[29] Time Out's Kris Vera said that the thread on Hatch's fear of alien invasion "has an unfortunate resonance amid an increasingly ridiculous political season" but "sits uncomfortably alongside" other parts of the play.