{‘I delivered utter gibberish for several moments’: The Actress, Larry Lamb and More on the Terror of Nerves

Derek Jacobi faced a bout of it during a international run of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it preceding The Vertical Hour opening on Broadway. Juliet Stevenson has likened it to “a malady”. It has even caused some to flee: One comedian vanished from Cell Mates, while Lenny Henry left the stage during Educating Rita. “I’ve completely gone,” he stated – although he did reappear to conclude the show.

Stage fright can induce the shakes but it can also trigger a complete physical lock-up, to say nothing of a utter verbal loss – all precisely under the gaze. So how and why does it take hold? Can it be defeated? And what does it appear to be to be taken over by the actor’s nightmare?

Meera Syal explains a common anxiety dream: “I find myself in a attire I don’t identify, in a character I can’t remember, viewing audiences while I’m exposed.” Years of experience did not render her immune in 2010, while staging a preview of Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. “Performing a one-woman show for two and half hours?” 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 way out leading to the courtyard at the back and I thought, ‘If I escaped now, they wouldn’t be able to find me.’”

Syal found the nerve to stay, then immediately forgot her words – but just persevered through the fog. “I faced the abyss and I thought, ‘I’ll overcome it.’ And I did. The persona of Shirley Valentine could be made up because the whole thing was her talking to the audience. So I just walked around the stage and had a brief reflection to myself until the script reappeared. I improvised for three or four minutes, saying complete gibberish in role.”

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Larry Lamb has contended with intense nerves over a long career of theatre. When he commenced as an beginner, long before Gavin and Stacey, he loved the preparation but performing filled him with fear. “The moment I got in front of an audience,” he says, “it all began to cloud over. My knees would begin shaking wildly.”

The stage fright didn’t ease when he became a pro. “It persisted for about a long time, but I just got better and better at masking it.” In 2001, he dried up as Claudius in Hamlet, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “It was the early performance at Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just into my initial speech, when Claudius is speaking to the people of Denmark, when my dialogue got lost in space. It got more severe. The entire cast were up on the stage, staring at me as I completely lost it.”

He survived that show but the leader recognised what had happened. “He saw I wasn’t in charge but only seeming I was. He said, ‘You’re not connecting to the audience. When the spotlights come down, you then ignore them.’”

The director maintained the audience lighting on so Lamb would have to acknowledge the audience’s presence. It was a pivotal moment in the actor’s career. “Slowly, it got easier. Because we were staging the show for the bulk of the year, slowly the fear vanished, until I was confident and directly interacting with the audience.”

Now 78, Lamb no longer has the stamina for theatre but enjoys his performances, presenting his own verse. He says that, as an actor, he kept interfering of his character. “You’re not giving the freedom – it’s too much you, not enough role.”

Harmony Rose-Bremner, who was selected in The Years in 2024, concurs. “Insecurity and insecurity go opposite everything you’re attempting to do – which is to be liberated, relax, completely immerse yourself in the part. The question is, ‘Can I make space in my thoughts to allow the persona to emerge?’” In The Years, as one of five actors all acting as the same woman in different stages of her life, she was delighted yet felt intimidated. “I’ve grown up doing theatre. It was always my safe space. I didn’t ever think I’d ever feel performance anxiety.”

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She remembers the night of the initial performance. “I truly didn’t know if I could continue,” she says. “It was the only occasion I’d experienced like that.” She succeeded, but felt swamped in the initial opening scene. “We were all standing still, just talking into the void. We weren’t looking at one other so we didn’t have each other to respond to. 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 inhale fully, like your air is being extracted with a void in your chest. There is nothing to grasp.” It is intensified by the emotion of not wanting to let fellow actors down: “I felt the duty to the entire cast. I thought, ‘Can I get through this enormous thing?’”

Zachary Hart blames imposter syndrome for inducing his performance anxiety. A spinal condition prevented his hopes to be a footballer, and he was working as a fork-lift truck driver when a acquaintance enrolled to drama school on his behalf and he was accepted. “Performing in front of people was completely unfamiliar to me, so at acting school I would be the final one every time we did something. I persevered because it was total relief – and was preferable than manual labor. I was going to give my all 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 production would be captured for NT Live, he was “frightened”. Some time later, in the initial performance of The Constituent, in which he was selected alongside James Corden and Anna Maxwell-Martin, he uttered his initial line. “I perceived my accent – with its strong Black Country speech – and {looked