{‘I delivered utter gibberish for four minutes’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and Others on the Terror of Performance Anxiety
Derek Jacobi faced a episode of it while on a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it before The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has compared it to “a disease”. It has even prompted some to take flight: One comedian vanished from Cell Mates, while Another performer left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he said – although he did reappear to conclude the show.
Stage fright can trigger the tremors but it can also cause a complete physical freeze-up, not to mention a utter verbal loss – all directly under the gaze. So for what reason does it take grip? Can it be overcome? And what does it feel like to be taken over by the stage terror?
Meera Syal recounts a classic anxiety dream: “I discover myself in a outfit I don’t identify, in a role I can’t recollect, viewing audiences while I’m naked.” Years of experience did not render her exempt 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 give you stage fright. I was frankly thinking of ‘doing a Stephen Fry’ just before the premiere. 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 gathered the bravery to remain, then quickly forgot her dialogue – but just persevered through the fog. “I faced the void and I thought, ‘I’ll get out of it.’ And I did. The character of Shirley Valentine could be ad-libbed because the whole thing was her addressing the audience. So I just walked around the set and had a little think to myself until the script reappeared. I ad-libbed for a short while, speaking complete nonsense in character.”
Larry Lamb has dealt with severe anxiety over years of theatre. When he commenced as an non-professional, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the rehearsal process but acting filled him with fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all started to get hazy. My legs would begin shaking unmanageably.”
The nerves didn’t diminish when he became a pro. “It continued for about three decades, 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 addressing the people of Denmark, when my words got lost in space. It got more severe. The full cast were up on the stage, looking at me as I totally lost it.”
He got through that act but the director recognised what had happened. “He understood I wasn’t in control but only appearing I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the lights come down, you then block them out.’”
The director kept the general illumination on so Lamb would have to accept the audience’s presence. It was a turning point in the actor’s career. “Gradually, it got improved. Because we were doing the show for the bulk of the year, slowly the fear vanished, until I was confident and openly interacting with the audience.”
Now 78, Lamb no longer has the vigor for plays but relishes his gigs, delivering his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his character. “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, echoes this. “Self-consciousness and self-doubt go contrary to everything you’re striving to do – which is to be uninhibited, relax, completely engage in the part. The question is, ‘Can I create room in my mind to permit the role through?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all portraying the same woman in various phases of her life, she was delighted yet felt intimidated. “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 opening try-out. “I really didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d had like that.” She coped, but felt overwhelmed in the very first opening scene. “We were all standing still, just addressing into the void. We weren’t facing one other so we didn’t have each other to bounce off. There were just the lines that I’d rehearsed so many times, reaching me. I had the standard indicators that I’d had in miniature before – but never to this extent. The experience of not being able to take a deep breath, like your breath is being sucked up with a emptiness in your lungs. There is no anchor to grasp.” It is worsened by the sensation of not wanting to fail cast actors down: “I felt the responsibility to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I endure this immense thing?’”
Zachary Hart attributes insecurity for inducing his stage fright. A spinal condition ruled out his dreams to be a athlete, and he was working as a machine operator when a acquaintance enrolled to drama school on his behalf and he got in. “Performing in front of people was utterly unfamiliar to me, so at training I would be the final one every time we did something. I stuck at it because it was total escapism – and was better than factory work. I was going to do my best 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 play would be recorded for NT Live, he was “frightened”. A long time later, in the first preview of The Constituent, in which he was cast alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he spoke his initial line. “I listened to my tone – with its strong Black Country accent – and {looked
