Two Jane Eyre Productions to Hit UK Stages This Autumn — One a Play, One a Musical
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is about to be everywhere. Two separate stage productions — one a touring play, the other a London musical — open within weeks of each other this autumn, each taking a different route through the same novel.
A new touring production of Jane Eyre, directed by Lily Dyble, winner of the 2025 Royal Theatrical Support Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award, has announced its full cast. Olivia Marcus will play Jane, with Gabriel Akuwudide as Edward Rochester. The production is a co-production — meaning three theatres share the costs and the work — between Mercury Theatre Colchester, Rose Theatre and Storyhouse, in association with Northern Stage (WhatsOnStage).
The play uses the adaptation credited to Sally Cookson, Mike Akers and the original company, first developed for the stage in a celebrated Bristol Old Vic production. It opens at Mercury Theatre Colchester from 26 September to 10 October 2026, then travels to Rose Theatre Kingston (13–24 October), Northern Stage in Newcastle (3–7 November) and Storyhouse in Chester (10–21 November) (WhatsOnStage).
The company is sizeable. Aamira Challenger plays Grace Poole, Teacher and Diana; Andrea Gatchalian plays Helen and Adèle; Kate Kordel plays Aunt Reed and Mrs Fairfax; Leo Wan plays Brocklehurst and Mason. Rounding out the cast: Millie Faraway as Bessie and Blanche, Oscar Adams as John Reed, Reverend and St John, and Robyn Rose-Li as Bertha. The creative team includes set designer Anna Yates, costume designer Khadija Raza, movement director Natasha Harrison, lighting designer Lucía Sánchez Roldán, composer and sound designer Joseff Harris, fight director Rachid Sabitri, intimacy director Haruka Kuroda and casting director Helena Palmer (WhatsOnStage).
Meanwhile, a quite different Jane Eyre is heading to London. A musical adaptation by John Caird and Paul Gordon — the duo behind the long-running Les Misérables and a score that has toured America but never been seen professionally in the UK — will receive its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse Elephant from 28 August to 24 October 2026 (WestEndTheatre.com). Charlie Burn plays Jane, with Ashley Gilmour as Rochester (WestEndTheatre.com).
So between late August and late November, audiences in Colchester, Kingston, Newcastle, Chester and London can choose between a sung-through Jane and a spoken one — or, for the completists, catch both.
Back in Colchester, the Mercury Theatre is running a competition for young people aged 12 and over. Winners receive free tickets to the play, a programme, and have their own story displayed at the venue (Mercury Theatre). It is the kind of outreach that a co-producing regional theatre can build around a big title — using a familiar novel to bring in people who might not think a 19th-century classic is for them.
What makes this autumn unusual is the parallel timing. Neither production is a transfer of the other. They are entirely separate enterprises, with different directors, different casts, different creative teams and different artistic ambitions — one a multi-venue regional tour of a physical-theatre adaptation, the other an off-West End musical receiving its first professional UK staging. The novel connects them. Little else does.
