{‘I uttered complete twaddle for several moments’: Meera Syal, The Veteran Performer and Others on the Fear of Nerves
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it while on a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it preceding The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to run away: Stephen Fry disappeared from Cell Mates, while Another performer exited the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he remarked – though he did reappear to conclude the show.
Stage fright can cause the tremors but it can also provoke a total physical freeze-up, as well as a total verbal drying up – all directly under the spotlight. So for what reason does it take grip? Can it be conquered? And what does it appear to be to be taken over by the stage terror?
Meera Syal explains a typical anxiety dream: “I find myself in a outfit I don’t know, in a character I can’t recall, viewing audiences while I’m exposed.” Years of experience did not leave her protected in 2010, while acting in a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Presenting a one-woman show for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the thing that is going to trigger stage fright. I was truly thinking of ‘running away’ just before press night. I could see the way out going to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal found the courage to remain, then quickly forgot her lines – but just soldiered on through the haze. “I looked into the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the entire performance was her addressing the audience. So I just walked around the scene and had a moment to myself until the script returned. I improvised for three or four minutes, speaking total twaddle in role.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with intense nerves over decades of theatre. When he started out as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the practice but performing induced fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to get hazy. My knees would begin trembling unmanageably.”
The performance anxiety didn’t lessen when he became a pro. “It continued for about a long time, but I just got better and better at hiding it.” In 2001, he froze as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the first preview at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my first speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got lost in space. It got increasingly bad. The entire cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I totally lost it.”
He got through that performance but the director recognised what had happened. “He realised I wasn’t in charge but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”
The director kept the general illumination on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s presence. It was a breakthrough in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got improved. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, over time the anxiety vanished, until I was poised and directly interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for theatre but enjoys his performances, presenting his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his role. “You’re not giving the freedom – it’s too much you, not enough role.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was chosen in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Insecurity and insecurity go contrary to everything you’re trying to do – which is to be uninhibited, let go, fully lose yourself in the character. The issue is, ‘Can I allow space in my thoughts to permit the role in?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all playing the same woman in distinct periods of her life, she was excited yet felt intimidated. “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 opening try-out. “I really didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d experienced like that.” She managed, but felt overwhelmed in the very opening scene. “We were all motionless, just addressing into the dark. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the words that I’d rehearsed so many times, coming towards me. I had the classic indicators that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this degree. The sensation of not being able to breathe properly, like your air is being extracted with a emptiness in your lungs. There is no support to grasp.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to fail fellow actors down: “I felt the responsibility to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to insecurity for inducing his nerves. A back condition ruled out his hopes to be a footballer, and he was working as a machine operator when a friend enrolled to acting school on his behalf and he was accepted. “Performing in front of people was completely foreign to me, so at training I would wait until the end every time we did something. I continued because it was total relief – and was better than manual labor. I was going to do my best to beat the fear.”
His initial acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the play would be captured for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Years later, in the opening try-out of The Constituent, in which he was chosen alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his opening line. “I heard my accent – with its distinct Black Country dialect – and {looked
