{‘I uttered utter gibberish for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Fear of Nerves
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it throughout a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a illness”. It has even prompted some to flee: Stephen Fry vanished from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he remarked – although he did return to conclude the show.
Stage fright can cause the jitters but it can also trigger a full physical lock-up, as well as a total verbal block – all directly under the lights. So how and why does it take hold? Can it be defeated? And what does it feel like to be taken over by the stage terror?
Meera Syal recounts a classic anxiety dream: “I end up in a attire I don’t identify, in a part I can’t recollect, viewing audiences while I’m naked.” Years of experience did not leave her immune in 2010, while performing a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a solo performance for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the factor that is going to trigger stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before press night. I could see the way out leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to locate me.’”
Syal gathered the bravery to remain, then promptly forgot her lines – but just continued through the fog. “I looked into the void and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the whole thing was her talking to the audience. So I just made my way around the scene and had a little think to myself until the script returned. I winged it for three or four minutes, speaking utter gibberish in role.”
Larry Lamb has faced powerful nerves over decades of theatre. When he commenced as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the preparation but performing filled him with fear. “The minute I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to get hazy. My knees would start knocking uncontrollably.”
The stage fright didn’t lessen when he became a pro. “It continued for about 30 years, but I just got better and better at concealing it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the initial try-out at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my opening speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my lines got lost in space. It got worse and worse. The full cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I utterly lost it.”
He survived that act but the guide recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in charge but only seeming I was. He said, ‘You’re not engaging with the audience. When the illumination come down, you then block them out.’”
The director maintained the general illumination on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s existence. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got better. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, slowly the anxiety went away, until I was confident and actively connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for plays but loves his live shows, performing his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not permitting the freedom – it’s too much you, not enough persona.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Self-consciousness and uncertainty go against everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be uninhibited, release, completely immerse yourself in the part. The question is, ‘Can I allow space in my mind to allow the role through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in various phases of her life, she was delighted yet felt overwhelmed. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She recollects the night of the initial performance. “I actually didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the first time I’d experienced like that.” She succeeded, but felt swamped in the very opening scene. “We were all standing still, just addressing into the dark. We weren’t observing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the words that I’d listened to so many times, approaching me. I had the classic indicators that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this extent. The sensation of not being able to inhale fully, like your breath is being drawn out with a void in your torso. There is no anchor to grasp.” It is intensified by the emotion of not wanting to fail cast actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I get through this huge thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for inducing his performance anxiety. A spinal condition prevented his dreams to be a footballer, and he was working as a machine operator when a acquaintance submitted to theatre college on his behalf and he was accepted. “Appearing in front of people was utterly alien to me, so at drama school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I continued because it was total escapism – and was preferable than manual labor. I was going to do my best to beat the fear.”
His first acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the show would be recorded for NT Live, he was “petrified”. A long time later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was selected alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his initial line. “I heard my accent – with its strong Black Country dialect – and {looked
