Thirty years after Toronto and a quarter of a century after Broadway, Jane Eyre has finally reached London, in a pared-back chamber version of the John Caird and Paul Gordon musical staged by Caird himself with Megan McGinnis at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Eighteen notices in, the picture is less settled than it first looked. Emily-Rose Samuel, who plays the young Jane, is the performance nearly everybody stops to praise, and most reviewers warm to Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour — but the nationals do not, The Guardian and Time Out both finding the leads smoothed into fairytale figures. On the score the split is sharper still: the same songs that one reviewer calls conversational and beautifully lyrical another finds syrupy and one-note. The ratings run from four stars to two.
The verdict: eighteen reviews so far — five four-star notices, two at three and a half, six at three, two at two, and three outlets that publish no rating. Across the fifteen that do score, the average is 3.3 out of 5. Almost every review singles out Emily-Rose Samuel, who alternates Young Jane and Adèle with Poppy Jason, and most of them admire Morgan Large’s design. What divides them is Paul Gordon’s score — and, now the nationals have filed, the leads themselves.
What are critics saying about JANE EYRE?
All That Dazzles
Reviewer: Daz Gale
“Equally, Jane Eyre boasts a thrilling and mesmerising design, with Morgan Large’s set gorgeously resembling Thornfield Hall with detail given to the gothic nature of the story. The thorns protruding from the stage are a fantastic touch as is the use of writing permanently displayed above. Large’s costume design also wows, blending the Victorian and gothic looks to create a great aesthetic. James Whiteside’s lighting brings the stage to life further, with a striking design that again feels bigger than the space it is in, but works to incredible effect. Bathing the stage in a red glow early on to relay the sinister goings on lets the audience know this is going to be a show that is stunning to watch from a visual perspective, despite the initial sparseness of the space. Andrew Johnson’s sound design never falters, making sure each word and sound is heard as intended - something that should never be taken for granted, given some shows that have struggled with that this year.”
Plays International & Europe
Reviewer: Louise Penn
“I might question the pacing of the first half, but the performances are uniformly excellent, especially the lead pair and young Samuel, who has a lot of emotionally charged moments as young Jane. This is a fine adaptation that is well worth your time.”
Read Louise Penn’s full review at Plays International & Europe
London Box Office
Reviewer: Stuart King
“I’ll concede that I didn’t expect to enjoy this production quite as much as I did. The songwriting (which taps Les Mis, and Into the Woods among others, for inspiration), benefits from solid musical knowledge and the aforementioned splendid arrangements which lift the gloomier and bleaker elements of the dour storyline into something more inspirational.”
theartsdesk
“The lovers’ chemistry is electrifying”
Reviewer: Gary Naylor
“She is very good indeed, and she needs to be because Emily-Rose Samuel is fantastic as the tween Jane being bullied at school, and proves equally impressive doubling as Adèle, the ward for whom Jane is employed as a governess. It’s not often that you see a child-actor deliver both crucial emotional development and later find laugh after laugh in a wholly new role. Emily-Rose is a name to look out for.”
Theatre and Tonic
Reviewer: Ziwen
“The songs are one of the production’s greatest strengths. I particularly enjoyed the conversational quality of the writing and the delicacy with which it handles emotion. Among the many lyrical and beautiful melodies, Painting Her Portrait and My Hope of Heaven stood out to me. The former captures Jane’s insecurity, her harshness towards herself, and her pain with remarkable clarity. The latter expresses Rochester’s passionate, turbulent, forceful, and at times tender love in remarkably simple and direct language.”
The Spy in the Stalls
Reviewer: Hannah Bothelton
“The strong ensemble cast is slick and assured, shifting effortlessly between multiple roles. Charlie Burn makes a compelling Jane, balancing quiet determination with moments of defiance, with a voice that soars like a bird. Ashley Gilmour’s Rochester brings brooding charisma and emotional turmoil, with a richly sonorous voice. Isabelle Methven shines in the contrasting roles of saintly Helen and spirited Bessie, while Emily-Rose Samuel (sharing the role with Poppy Jason) impresses as Young Jane/Adele, combining a bright voice with remarkable maturity.”
Read Hannah Bothelton’s full review at The Spy in the Stalls
The Reviews Hub
Reviewer: A. Tran Ngoc
“In contrast, Act 2 changes pace completely, and the audience is regaled with a number of fully developed songs, as well as musical reprises from the first act which give the piece more unity. We finally get a chance to savour Burn’s beautiful voice, notably in Painting her Portrait, and enjoy Gilmour’s comically masterful rendition of Dear Sister. Heartfelt scenes of pain and reconciliation between Jane’s family members and Rochester are poignant, yet the contrast in storytelling is almost a disappointment as we lose the narration so present in Act 1.”
WhatsOnStage
Reviewer: Theo Bosanquet
“Caird and co-director Megan McGinnis (who starred in another of Caird and and Gordon’s literary musicals, Daddy Long Legs), together with choreographer Georgina Lamb, lean heavily into the melodrama of it all, to the point it can feel a touch on the mawkish side. However, although it doesn’t quite convince as an overlooked masterpiece, there is no doubt it has merits, together with some stonking central performances, and is one that musical aficionados won’t want to miss.”
LondonTheatre.co.uk
“Yearning chemistry and emotive singing in this musical adaptation of a classic”
Reviewer: Julia Rank
“As Jane and Edward Fairfax Rochester, Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour are an appealing pair who share a convincingly yearning chemistry. Unlike their characters, both are conventionally attractive (as is so often the case in adaptations). Burn's Jane feels closer to Belle in Beauty and the Beast than to Brontë's fey, fiery misfit, but she’s a heroine worth rooting for.”
BroadwayWorld
“This musical adaptation fails to strike at the heart of Charlotte Brontë’s novel”
Reviewer: Clementine Scott
“Meanwhile, Charlie Burn and Ashley Gilmour as Jane and Rochester portray their characters’ relationship with an appealing focus on self-realisation, the idea that the pair know themselves better on account of knowing each other. Their initial chance meeting out in the hills is played for laughs, in a baffling scene that makes their ensuing bond a little hard to believe, but the performers later rescue this with their powerful, psychologically rooted chemistry. They give consistently emotive vocal performances, too.”
LondonTheatre1
Reviewer: John Groves
“Ashley Gilmour has terrific stage presence as Rochester and easily commands the stage; he also looks suitably dashing and is a strong singer, even if he is inclined to sound too American. Burn and Gilmour work seamlessly together and almost make one forget that the dialogue they are given seems nothing like as poetic as Brontë’s original!”
Plays To See
Reviewer: Richard Voyce
As one would have thought Mr Caird would have learned from his masterly co-adaptation of Boublil and Schönberg’s musical take on Victor Hugo’s epic, Les Misérables, for the West End stage, not everything in the book needs to be in the musical.
This version, however, gives us acres of tedious back story when we are invited to invest our emotional capital in the tragic early life of our heroine as a child — which we do.
I would humbly suggest to Messrs Caird and McGinnis that half of the first act is completely superfluous and, anyway, portrays our supposed heroine as a passive dishrag thrown from pillar to post.
The Guardian
“More Disney romance than Victorian gothic”
Reviewer: Holly O’Mahony
“The songs dilute the story’s grit and hardship with syrupy sentiment. The overuse of twinkly wind chimes and pop-style scoop notes become musical tics, shifting the dial closer to Disney romance than Victorian gothic. Early numbers The Governess and Forgiveness are particularly cloying. But the better songs – including Jane’s Sweet Liberty and Rochester’s As Good As You – contain hints of Schönberg and Boublil’s Les Misérables (the original UK production of which Caird co-directed). And if the material itself is broadly one-note, this is still a fine-tuned production that runs like clockwork.”
Musical Theatre Review
Reviewer: Susan Elkin
“Brontë wrote Jane Eyre as a first person narrative and this production attempts to retain that but gets it jarringly wrong. From time to time the ensemble becomes a quasi Greek chorus voicing Jane’s memories in statements, spoken in turn. It doesn’t work at all if Burn and/or Emily-Rose is on stage and silent. Jane Eyre almost more than any other character in fiction can, and should, speak for herself. If she doesn’t the whole point is lost.”
Theatre Weekly
“never quite captures the emotional sweep of the great romance at its centre”
Reviewer: Greg Stewart
“This UK premiere tells Brontë’s story with clarity and conviction, supported by strong performances and striking design. Yet despite these accomplishments, it never quite captures the emotional sweep of the great romance at its centre, leaving a production that is engaging, but ultimately less heartfelt than it ought to be.”
Time Out
“This slick musical romance doesn’t capture the gothic darkness of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece”
Reviewer: Andrzej Lukowski
“Co-directed by Caird and Megan McGinnis, it’s a slick, melodious production that rapidly reveals the essential ‘problem’ with the whole endeavour. Jane Eyre is one of the greatest books ever written. Jane Eyre: A Musical is an elegant, tuneful but essentially bang-average affair that boils the source material’s unsettling gothic vision into a boilerplate period love story between Charlie Burn’s straitlaced Jane and Ashley Gilmour’s overly kooky Rochester. The story slips down too easily, with Paul Gordon’s warm, stately music far too pretty and uplifting. And while the ensemble is nominally colourblind, the decision to have a white actor playing the first Mrs Rochester feels utterly bizarre – surely not a naïve blunder but rather an effort to make Rochester himself a less problematic figure by smoothing over the most controversial element of the entire story.”
British Theatre Guide
Reviewer: Zia Trench
This intimate production features a cast of just 11 performers, but the standard throughout is exceptionally high. The company is packed with talent, and one of the greatest pleasures of the evening is the quality of the voices. Paul Gordon’s score gives the cast plenty of opportunities to shine, from emotional solos and beautiful duets to powerful ensemble moments. The singing is confident, rich and full of feeling, bringing real depth and passion to Brontë’s famous story.
Production photographs by Victoria Davies.
Also reviewed by: The Stage (Tom Wicker, three stars, “Chemistry anchors the story”), whose review sits behind a paywall.
London Box Office also caught an earlier performance: Shehrazade Zafar-Arif’s First Look at Jane Eyre awards the same four stars. For more of what the critics have been saying this month, our recent roundups cover Krapp’s Last Tape at The Cockpit and Holy Fool at the Park Theatre.
Jane Eyre runs at the Southwark Playhouse Elephant until Saturday 24 October 2026.
