{‘I spoke total nonsense for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and Others on the Fear of Stage Fright
Derek Jacobi endured a bout of it while on a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it preceding The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a malady”. It has even prompted some to flee: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Another performer walked off the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he remarked – even if he did come back to conclude the show.
Stage fright can trigger the jitters but it can also cause a full physical freeze-up, to say nothing of a total verbal loss – all right under the gaze. So how and why does it take grip? Can it be conquered? And what does it appear to be to be gripped by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I find myself in a outfit I don’t recognise, in a role I can’t remember, facing audiences while I’m naked.” Decades of experience did not leave her immune in 2010, while staging a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a monologue for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the aspect that is going to trigger stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before the premiere. I could see the exit opening onto the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I ran away now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal gathered the courage to remain, then immediately forgot her lines – but just continued through the fog. “I faced the unknown and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be made up because the show was her addressing the audience. So I just made my way around the stage and had a moment to myself until the words reappeared. I ad-libbed for a short while, uttering total twaddle in character.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with powerful fear over years of performances. When he began as an amateur actor, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the preparation but being on stage filled him with fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to get hazy. My knees would start shaking unmanageably.”
The stage fright didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It persisted for about a long time, but I just got more adept at masking it.” In 2001, he froze as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the initial try-out at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my first speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my dialogue got lost in space. It got worse and worse. The full cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I completely lost it.”
He got through that performance but the leader recognised what had happened. “He understood I wasn’t in control but only looking as if I was. He said, ‘You’re not interacting with the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director kept the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s attendance. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got better. Because we were staging the show for the majority of the year, over time the stage fright vanished, until I was poised and directly interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the energy for theatre but relishes his gigs, performing his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his character. “You’re not allowing the freedom – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and uncertainty go against everything you’re trying to do – which is to be liberated, release, completely engage in the character. The issue is, ‘Can I allow space in my head to permit the persona through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was delighted yet felt daunted. “I’ve been raised doing theatre. It was always my comfort zone. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel stage fright.”
She recollects the night of the first preview. “I really didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the initial instance I’d experienced like that.” She coped, but felt overwhelmed in the initial opening scene. “We were all motionless, 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 heard so many times, coming towards me. I had the standard symptoms that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this level. The sensation of not being able to inhale fully, like your air is being drawn out with a void in your torso. There is no anchor to hold on to.” It is intensified by the sensation of not wanting to disappoint cast actors down: “I felt the obligation to everybody else. I thought, ‘Can I endure this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes imposter syndrome for causing his performance anxiety. A back condition prevented his dreams to be a soccer player, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a friend applied to theatre college on his behalf and he was accepted. “Standing up in front of people was utterly unfamiliar to me, so at drama school I would be the final one every time we did something. I persevered because it was total relief – and was better than industrial jobs. I was going to do my best to conquer the fear.”
His first acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were told the play would be recorded for NT Live, he was “frightened”. Years later, in the opening try-out of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he delivered his first line. “I heard my tone – with its strong Black Country dialect – and {looked
