In an effort to attract families to New York theatre during the winter months — a time when ticket sales generally slump — several Broadway shows will offer a 7 PM curtain time Tuesday evenings. Among the shows featuring this early curtain are Flower Drum Song, Aida, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and 42nd Street. Chris Boneau, who heads Boneau/Bryan-Brown, told Playbill On-Line last year, "The idea was to encourage people to come to the theatre on Tuesday nights . . . to drive [what is traditionally] a lower-attended evening of theatre. The research shows that people would really go to the theatre on a night if they didn't always have to go at eight o'clock. Unfortunately," Boneau added, "we're not like London, where you check the paper to see what time the curtain times are [because] they're wildly different. People are so accustomed to eight o'clock curtains . . . so the idea was to get a lot of shows involved.

Boneau also explained, "Both Roundabout and Manhattan Theatre Club have early curtain evenings, and they're very popular. So, it's not a brand-new idea, it's just an idea that's new to Broadway. What it requires is a marketing effort behind it, so that everyone's not running around Times Square not knowing what time to be there . . . That's why we're calling it 'Tuesdays at 7.'"