{‘I uttered complete gibberish for several moments’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and More on the Dread of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi experienced a bout of it throughout a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy grappled with it in the run-up to The Vertical Hour premiering on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has equated it to “a illness”. It has even led some to flee: One comedian went missing from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he remarked – although he did reappear to conclude the show.
Stage fright can trigger the shakes but it can also cause a complete physical lock-up, not to mention a complete verbal block – all precisely under the lights. So why and how does it take grip? Can it be defeated? And what does it seem like to be taken over by the actor’s nightmare?
Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a costume I don’t know, in a role I can’t remember, viewing audiences while I’m exposed.” A long time of experience did not make her immune in 2010, while performing a early show of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a solo performance for two and half hours?” she says. “That’s the thing that is going to give you stage fright. I was honestly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before the premiere. I could see the way out leading to the yard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to catch me.’”
Syal found the courage to persist, then immediately forgot her words – but just persevered through the fog. “I stared into the void and I thought, ‘I’ll escape it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be improvised because the entire performance was her addressing the audience. So I just moved around the scene and had a brief reflection to myself until the words returned. I ad-libbed for several moments, saying complete gibberish in persona.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with severe nerves over decades of stage work. When he started out as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he adored the rehearsal process but being on stage caused fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all would cloud over. My legs would begin shaking uncontrollably.”
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 concealing 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 opening speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my dialogue got trapped in space. It got more severe. The full cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I completely lost it.”
He endured that show but the director 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 spotlights come down, you then shut them out.’”
The director kept the general illumination on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s attendance. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got easier. Because we were doing the show for the best part of the year, over time the stage fright vanished, until I was confident and openly interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for plays but relishes his performances, 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 you, not enough character.”
Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Insecurity and uncertainty go contrary to everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be liberated, relax, totally immerse yourself in the role. The issue is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to allow the character through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in different stages 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 nerves.”
She recalls the night of the first preview. “I truly didn’t know if I could perform,” she says. “It was the first time I’d experienced like that.” She coped, but felt overcome in the very first opening scene. “We were all standing still, just talking into the void. 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, approaching me. I had the typical indicators that I’d had in minor form before – but never to this extent. The experience of not being able to take a deep breath, like your air is being drawn out with a emptiness in your torso. There is no support to hold on to.” It is worsened by the sensation of not wanting to disappoint other actors down: “I felt the responsibility to everybody else. I thought, ‘Can I endure this enormous thing?’”
Zachary Hart blames insecurity for causing his performance anxiety. A spinal condition ruled out his hopes to be a footballer, and he was working as a machine operator when a companion enrolled to drama school on his behalf and he enrolled. “Appearing in front of people was completely unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would wait until the end every time we did something. I stuck at it because it was pure relief – and was superior than industrial jobs. I was going to give my all to overcome the fear.”
His debut acting job was in Nicholas Hytner’s Julius Caesar at the Bridge theatre. When the cast were told the show would be captured for NT Live, he was “terrified”. Some time later, in the initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his initial line. “I perceived my voice – with its pronounced Black Country accent – and {looked
