The New York theater community spent most of the 1980s moaning about the
flood of British musicals. Now the tide has receded—the “newest” Brit
mega-musical currently on Broadway has been there for eight years—and the
New York theater community has reverted to its pre-Lloyd Webber pastime of
moaning about the flood of British plays. This is a time-honored tradition.
Thirty years ago, in his book The Season, William Goldman wrote, “London is
my favorite city, but right now, having sat through an American theatre year,
I’m sick of the English. I’m sick of rotten English actors and I’m sick of
rotten English plays.” Goldman blamed the British for what he called “the
Snob Hit”—or rather, not so much the British but their Broadway importers:
“I’m sickest of all of rotten American producers who keep bringing over damn
near anything that receives the gentlest London critical approval.” Goldman’s
verdict on the 1967–68 season could have been written last week.

Needless to say, the Snob Hit and the Brit-hit mega-spectacles play to
different crowds, although there’s occasionally some overlap, albeit
involuntary: a few years ago, American tourists in London who couldn’t get
into Cats were pounced on by canny touts who offered them high-priced tickets
for “another show by the same chap”—a gruelling revival of T. S.
Eliot’s
The Cocktail Party. Curiously, in
seeking to date precisely the origins of the
Snob Hit, Goldman settles on January 21, 1950: the first night of
The Cocktail Partyat