"…How many plays make a special point of the synchronicity of the Mount St. Helens eruption and the suicide of the musician Ian Curtis of Joy Division?…[Phenomenon's] twisted small-town stereotypes and offbeat theatrical form give it the engagingly ironic sensibility of diluted David Lynch."
– Phoebe Hoban, The New York Times, March 8, 2006

"Variety theater reporter and former Newsday critic Gordon Cox’s spare script has a structural elegance that shines through the characters...and the cast’s painstaking performances ground his flights of fancy in recognizable human reality. For all the setting’s ominousness, however, the play’s best moments are its bursts of goofy whimsy… "
– Jessica Branch, TimeOut New York, March 16–22, 2006


"Phenomenon is a stylized breakthrough in experimental theater...[it] successfully defies genre with good humor, great acting, and an excellent sense of self...Nothing is one-dimensional.

"Phenomenon surpasses every expectation that it sets up: more than a play about a volcano, more than a musical about love, more than performance art about estrangement. Phenomenon gets past that by reinventing the rules and remembering that no matter what life throws at us, the greatest natural disaster is, and has always been, that of the heart.
– Aaron Riccio, New Theater Corps