Dear All,

Welcome to the Christmas 2025 edition of Ensemble. 

A wonderful early Christmas present for our Stagecoach colleagues this month, as the company has been placed at number one in the Elite Franchise UK list – the official ranking for the Top 100 franchises. This terrific achievement places Stagecoach above McDonalds – truly unbelievable! – and is the first time in the history of the EF100 that a children’s brand has hit the number one position. Congratulations to you all for your terrific hard work. What an achievement.

Ticketing has enjoyed a phenomenal 2025. The Black Friday campaign generated an astonishing £18.8m across both London Theatre Direct & Trafalgar Tickets, an increase of £5m year-on-year. London Theatre Direct broke £900K in one day for the first time ever. They also achieved the highest number of website visitors in a month with over 2.4m hits. Congratulations to everyone in the ticketing team! 

Some exciting production announcements this month. Following a starring role in The King and I, we’re excited to be working with Helen George again on another Trafalgar production. This time, it’s High Society at the Barbican as part of our annual summer residency, and Trafalgar Releasing have just announced Othello starring David Harewood and Toby Jones is coming to cinemas.

Don’t forget, if you missed it at the Barbican last year, you can also watch Trafalgar’s production of Kiss Me, Kate starring Adrian Dunbar and Stephanie J. Block on BBC2 and iPlayer at 3.35pm on New Year’s Eve. Not to be missed! 

Congratulations to everyone who worked on the Eastbourne Theatres New Era campaign. The project has been shortlisted for Campaign of the Year at The Stage Awards 2026. Winners will be announced in January. Fingers crossed for a win!

2025 has been another momentous year for Trafalgar with new venues and colleagues, royal visits, award wins, ground-breaking partnerships, new sponsorships, showstopping productions, innovative marketing campaigns, community projects, and iconic big screen moments. In this special Ensemble, we reveal some of our biggest highlights of the year. Thank you all for your dedication, hard work, ideas, and contributions to Trafalgar in 2025. We couldn’t do this without you. 

The festive season is now in full swing across all our regional venues, and Imagine Theatre are producing 19 pantomimes across the UK this year. We’re also presenting some lovely Christmas shows including Elf the Musical in Bradford and The Snow Queen in Southend. 

Howard and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year. Enjoy a well deserved break and spend some quality time with your families and loved ones.

Enjoy reading this festive edition of Ensemble, take care of yourselves, and we’ll see you all in 2026.

Best wishes
Rosemary