The National Announces 6:30pm Experiment--Is Broadway Next?

Last week, London’s National Theatre announced that starting in February 2024, select Tuesday and Thursday performances for new productions will begin at 6:30pm. This “trial,” which the National stated was based on research it undertook “to understand more from audiences about their post-Covid lifestyles and habits,” is currently scheduled to last until mid-year. Is it a good idea? Should the West End or Broadway adopt 6:30pm curtains? It’s hard to know, but the move could pay off.

Broadway has recently seen a change in schedule pay off. A Beautiful Noise went to a four-matinee schedule and saw a jump at the box office. Every week since the early September change, A Beautiful Noise has topped the weekly grosses it achieved in July and August.

“It’s not only adding a Thursday matinee—which is a show our audience wanted, they wanted another matinee—it was getting rid of the Wednesday night,” said A Beautiful Noise lead producer Ken Davenport. “Most audiences, up and down the street, don’t want a Wednesday night. I would put money on it that it’s everybody's worst performance of the week. So it’s two wins—we got rid of the worst show of the week and added something that our audience wants.”

Davenport, who will put up a full analysis of numbers on his Producer's Perspective blog this Thursday, said that the first Thursday matinee had twice the attendance of an average Wednesday night. Revenue, the most essential figure, more than doubled as compared to the usual Wednesday night performance. The added performance sold more premium tickets and attracted more tourists. According to Davenport, that "positive trend continues." (It should be noted there is also something to being the only game in town on a particular day/time. Chicago and Six have found success on Monday nights, which is typically a dark day for theater. Phantom—which had a Thursday matinee instead of, not in addition to, a Wednesday matinee—also liked that Monday slot.)

In terms of a general trend, Davenport cited a 2022 New York Times article titled “For New Yorkers, 6 p.m. Is the New 8 p.m.” in discussing how current audiences may want to be done with theater earlier. But I was reminded how The New York Times stressed the same thing back in 2003 when “Tuesdays at 7” were introduced. “Tuesdays at 7” was once a limited experiment, similar to the National’s 6:30pm trial. Tuesdays were performing poorly, so industry folks thought they'd give an earlier curtain a try. The trial was met with the same sort of mixed reactions that the National trial is being met with. Some people said it was too early to be there after work or too early to eat pre-show, some simply relished getting home earlier after a show.

''If you read E. B. White's essays, he makes the observation about how appalling it is that people have started to go to lunch at 12:30 in the afternoon,'' the Times quoted then League President Jed Bernstein as saying in 2003. ''Going to lunch at 1, which he was used to, made sense because they didn't get to the office till 10, and in those days, theater started at 8:30.”

Tuesdays at 7 was such a smash most shows now have Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7. A Beautiful Noise’s Thursday matinee has been so successful, Davenport’s Harmony will have the same schedule after it opens. And Broadway has reached audiences with other alternative schedules. For example, David Byrne's American Utopia had a 9pm Saturday night, Hedwig and the Angry Inch had a 10pm Saturday night. Just For Us began most of its performances at 7:30pm, but it had a 8:30pm Thursday start, which was later augmented with a 5pm Thursday show. Just For Us was dark Sunday, as are many West End shows, but if you floated that idea to most Broadway producers they’d doubt your sanity. (On Broadway, Sunday has the biggest performance time variability among shows. Disney, for example, offers its audiences a 1pm and 6:30pm on that day. Neither are traditional times.)

It's all about giving people what they want. Listening to a particular show's audience. Neither Davenport nor I think it is a coincidence that A Beautiful Noise, which caters to an older crowd, has had bigger numbers for its matinees in general. 

Now, there are certain things the Production Contract won’t allow producers to do. They can’t have a matinee on the first day of the performance week after the required day off. They need Equity consent to have more than two shows per day or 5 performances in any 3-day period. There are more. So it’s about giving people what they want within parameters.

There is seemingly little harm in experimenting (other than of course people not realizing the correct curtain time). I hate matinees and 7pm curtains, one of my friends solely attends them; luckily, we both have options.

Industry Trends Weekly is a short column that runs in the weekly Industry Pro Newsletter. To read past columns and subscribe Click Here. If you have an idea for the column, you can reach the author at cara@broadwayworld.com.