{‘I delivered total gibberish for a brief period’: Meera Syal, The Veteran Performer and More on the Terror of Nerves
Derek Jacobi experienced a instance of it during a global production of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour debuting on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a illness”. It has even caused some to run away: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Another performer left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve utterly gone,” he said – although he did return to complete the show.
Stage fright can cause the tremors but it can also trigger a complete physical paralysis, to say nothing of a utter verbal loss – all precisely under the spotlight. So why and how does it take hold? Can it be defeated? And what does it appear to be to be taken over by the performer’s fear?
Meera Syal explains a typical anxiety dream: “I find myself in a outfit I don’t know, in a character I can’t remember, viewing audiences while I’m exposed.” A long time of experience did not leave her protected in 2010, while acting in a try-out of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a monologue for a lengthy period?” she says. “That’s the factor that is going to cause stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘fleeing’ just before the premiere. I could see the way out opening onto the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal mustered the bravery to persist, then quickly forgot her lines – but just soldiered on through the fog. “I faced the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the entire performance was her addressing the audience. So I just walked around the stage and had a brief reflection to myself until the words returned. I improvised for a short while, speaking complete twaddle in persona.”
Larry Lamb has faced severe nerves over a long career of stage work. When he started out as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the rehearsal process but performing caused fear. “The instant I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to become unclear. My legs would begin knocking uncontrollably.”
The nerves didn’t diminish when he became a professional. “It continued for about 30 years, but I just got more skilled at masking it.” In 2001, he forgot his lines as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the first preview at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my initial speech, when Claudius is addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got lost in space. It got more severe. The entire cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I completely lost it.”
He got through that act but the leader recognised what had happened. “He understood I wasn’t in charge but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not interacting with the audience. When the illumination come down, you then shut them out.’”
The director maintained the house lights on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s existence. It was a turning point 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 stage fright disappeared, until I was self-assured and directly engaging with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for plays but loves his gigs, presenting his own writing. He says that, as an actor, he kept obstructing of his persona. “You’re not permitting the space – it’s too much yourself, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was cast in The Years in 2024, agrees. “Insecurity and uncertainty go against everything you’re striving to do – which is to be free, relax, fully immerse yourself in the part. The question is, ‘Can I create room in my thoughts to let the character through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as 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 happy place. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel nerves.”
She recollects the night of the first preview. “I really didn’t know if I could go on,” she says. “It was the first time I’d felt like that.” She coped, but felt overcome in the very first opening scene. “We were all motionless, just addressing into the blackness. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the dialogue that I’d rehearsed so many times, reaching me. I had the typical indicators that I’d had in small doses before – but never to this degree. The experience of not being able to inhale fully, like your breath is being sucked up with a void in your chest. There is nothing to grasp.” It is worsened by the feeling of not wanting to disappoint fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to all involved. I thought, ‘Can I endure this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart points to self-doubt for inducing his stage fright. A spinal condition ruled out his hopes to be a athlete, and he was working as a warehouse operator when a acquaintance enrolled to theatre college on his behalf and he was accepted. “Standing up in front of people was completely foreign to me, so at acting school I would be the final one every time we did something. I persevered because it was total distraction – and was better than factory work. I was going to give my all to conquer the fear.”
His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were notified the show would be filmed for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Years later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his opening line. “I heard my tone – with its pronounced Black Country accent – and {looked
