Jane Eyre at Haddon Hall

Today, April 4, is the first of the live promenade performances of Jane Eyre at Haddon Hall:

Jane Eyre At Haddon Hall - Live Promenade Performance

Tuesday 4th, Wednesday 5th & Thursday 6th April at 2:30pm-4:15pm and 5pm-6:45pm each day.
Matinee afternoon performance.
Arrive half an hour before the performance begins to enjoy light refreshments.
Live promenade performance plays around the hall.

Tuesday 20th, Wednesday 21st & Thursday 22nd June
Gala Evening Performances – June
Arrive one hour before performance to enjoy a glass of Prosecco under the arch of the restaurant and then enjoy a three course meal after the play has ended in Haddon’s Restaurant.

In celebration of Haddon Hall’s connection with Jane Eyre over the years, Gillian Shimwell has been commissioned by the family to write an exciting new promenade play, called Jane Eyre at Haddon Hall. Performed for the first time this season.
The play features costumed actors playing key roles from the novel, with visitors walking the hall alongside the characters.

Derbyshire Life has some further information:

In Gillian’s version, just four characters take spectators on an hour-long walking tour through some of Haddon Hall’s most famous rooms to tell Jane’s spellbinding tale. Homely narrator Mrs Fairfax guides the audience through the courtyard to rooms such as the Banqueting Hall, the Tudor Parlour and the Long Gallery as they experience Jane’s initially tentative, ultimately touching, relationship with Mr Rochester.
They can feel the pain and humiliation of her schooldays at the hands of convincingly stern master Mr Brocklehurst, her arrival at Thornfield Hall as a shy yet spiritually strong governess and her first, rather formal, meeting with Mr Rochester before a roaring fire.
Their ‘intellectual sympathy’ develops apace, with touching scenes redolent with tension and emotion in the Long Gallery, leading up to Rochester’s proposal of marriage in the garden.
Sound effects from the couple’s abortive nuptials in the Chapel and Jane’s revelatory encounter with Mrs Rochester vividly convey the tragic and impossible situation in which the hero and heroine find themselves to spectators listening in the courtyard.
The final scene, in the unique setting of the Tudor Room, crackles with tenderness and triumph as the now blind Mr Rochester is reunited with his beloved Jane, who rather satisfyingly announces: ‘Reader, I married him’.