{‘I uttered total nonsense for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Dread of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it throughout a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it preceding The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to take flight: One comedian disappeared from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve totally gone,” he remarked – even if he did return to conclude the show.
Stage fright can induce the jitters but it can also cause a total physical freeze-up, to say nothing of a utter verbal loss – all precisely under the lights. So how and why does it take hold? Can it be conquered? And what does it feel like to be seized by the stage terror?
Meera Syal explains a classic anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a outfit I don’t identify, in a role I can’t recall, looking at audiences while I’m exposed.” Years of experience did not leave her protected in 2010, while staging a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a monologue for an extended time?” she says. “That’s the factor that is going to trigger stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘running away’ just before opening night. I could see the exit going to the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I fled now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the bravery to remain, then quickly forgot her dialogue – but just persevered through the fog. “I looked into the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The role of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the show was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the stage and had a moment to myself until the script returned. I winged it for several moments, saying total twaddle in character.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with powerful fear over years of stage work. When he started out as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he enjoyed the rehearsal process but performing filled him with fear. “The minute I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all would become unclear. My knees would start knocking wildly.”
The performance anxiety didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It went on for about three decades, but I just got more adept 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 addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got stuck in space. It got worse and worse. The full cast were up on the stage, watching me as I completely lost it.”
He got through that act but the guide recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in command but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the illumination come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director maintained the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to recognise the audience’s attendance. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got improved. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, over time the fear went away, until I was confident and openly connecting to the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for plays but loves his gigs, performing his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his character. “You’re not giving the space – it’s too much yourself, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Self-awareness and uncertainty go against everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be free, release, completely engage in the role. The question is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to let the role in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in different stages of her life, she was delighted yet felt intimidated. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”
She recollects the night of the opening try-out. “I actually didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the first time I’d had like that.” She succeeded, but felt overwhelmed in the very first opening scene. “We were all motionless, just speaking out into the dark. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to respond to. There were just the words that I’d listened to so many times, approaching me. I had the typical signs that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this degree. The experience of not being able to inhale fully, like your breath is being drawn out with a emptiness in your torso. There is no support to hold on to.” It is compounded by the sensation of not wanting to fail other actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I survive this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for triggering his nerves. A lower back condition prevented his aspirations to be a soccer player, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a acquaintance enrolled to theatre college on his behalf and he got in. “Performing in front of people was completely alien to me, so at acting school I would go last every time we did something. I continued because it was total distraction – and was preferable than factory work. I was going to do my best to overcome the fear.”
His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were informed the show would be filmed for NT Live, he was “petrified”. A long time later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his opening line. “I perceived my tone – with its distinct Black Country accent – and {looked
