I think that you see how you want to appear on the stage. And I don’t mean physically: what I mean, rather, is that somehow you ‘see’ what you want to do with your character, how you want her to be. What is her reality? You glimpse it, distantly, and as you rehearse, and with the help of your colleagues and your director, and the costume department and the make-up artist, and so on, gradually, it all feeds into your ‘being’. Then the creation, your character’s being, starts slowly and imperceptibly to take root, and to be there for you to step into on the first night, or whenever the first audience appears.
That’s why I hate it when people ask to watch a rehearsal. Sometimes directors say, ‘Oh, I’ve asked a few people to come in to see how we’re going.’ I can’t bear it, because a performance is a fragile butterfly of a thing — and it has to be coaxed and nourished and soothed. Exposure too early is scary and frightening, because an actor’s nature is to perform — that is what we do. And that’s how we think of ourselves — we are the performers and you are the audience. When we see an audience, we will perform, but if we’re not ready to deliver our performance, then something phony, invented and inorganic is risked being laid onto the fragile structure that is slowly coming into being. (I’m talking about acting for the stage here, of course, and theatre is where I feel at home, and where I feel I know what I’m doing. Acting for film is another beast altogether.)
My stage fright has only increased as I’ve got older. The expectations of the audience have become so much higher and I don’t want to let them down. I now have a bucket in the wings because I am so often sick before I go on stage. I’m not alone in this regard: Maggie Smith told me in Australia, when she was performing the Alan Bennett monologues in Sydney, how terribly nervous she gets, to the point of vomiting.
When Stephen Fry ran away after everything went wrong with Cell Mates, I knew just how he was feeling. I tried to tell him that all would be well and that he shouldn’t be so hard on himself. I know that feeling of despair, of feeling trapped, that horrible panic, and I know that he suffers with an even deeper kind of depression. I worried that he might kill himself. This calls forth the entirely sensible question: why do we do it to ourselves? And keep doing it? The thing is that once you’re on stage, you’re on, and when it works there is no feeling like it; to inhabit your part and to hear the audience gasp and know that they are catching their breath because of you.
The dread of forgetting one’s lines, I think, is the basis of all anxiety in the theatre, and it has been for me. As I get older, it feels ever more perilous — even thinking about it now makes me feel nervous.
In 1979, I was in the Snoo Wilson play Flaming Bodies at the ICA with Julie Walters. I had an eight-page monologue and I just couldn’t remember it. My panic built up during rehearsals and by the afternoon of our first night, I was in a state of terror. I told Julie that I knew I couldn’t do it and I wasn’t going to go on. She tried her best to soothe me: ‘Don’t worry, Miriam. You’ll remember it. It’ll be all right on the night. You’ll be fine.’
‘No, I fucking won’t,’ I wailed. ‘It’s hopeless!’ And I ran out of the ICA, hailed a black cab on the Mall and jumped into it. Julie was hot on my heels and she jumped straight in after me. We then spent the next few hours driving around London as the taxi-meter clicked up and she desperately tried to talk me round. Poor Julie, it was early in her career and she must have been in flat despair. But I was adamant: I’d had days to think about it and I knew I couldn’t remember my monologue. On we drove until eventually we got the cabbie to stop somewhere and we went for a cup of tea. I didn’t do the performance that first night — but I did it on the second night and it was fine: I remembered that bloody monologue after all and survived to tell the tale. I believe Julie forgave me; I hope so.
To learn my lines, I often go off and lock myself away for a week or two and do nothing except learn and properly get to know the text, and I see no one and do nothing apart from that script. Then I hire someone for another week to run through it again and again with me until it is written deep into my brain. I then remember it until the end of the last night of the show — then it’s wiped clean.
Forgetting one’s lines is only one of the potential pitfalls of performing on stage. When I was in Sir Peter Hall’s 1993 production of She Stoops to Conquer, I played Mrs Hardcastle with Donald Sinden as Mr Hardcastle and David Essex as Tony Lumpkin. Everybody adored David Essex. He had perfect manners and a melting smile. Like Leonardo DiCaprio, he was safe with me but not with anyone else. We laughed from morning to night. Donald was another wonderful colleague. He very much enjoyed my dirty stories and had a way with audiences. For example, one night somebody in the audience had a hacking cough. They kept coughing and coughing and coughing, and finally Donald stopped the performance. He went to the front of the stage, leaving Squire Hardcastle behind, and said in his ordinary voice (except that it wasn’t an ordinary voice at all, but a magical one of strength and masculinity), ‘I say, that’s a bad cough you’ve got there. Has anybody near you got a throat pastille, or something?’ Somebody passed the man a cough sweet, and Donald said, ‘Have a good suck on that, that’ll help you.’ Donald was a delightful colleague. At the curtain call one night, a particularly unresponsive audience — real puddings all evening, suddenly erupted into a standing ovation. Donald muttered to me: ‘Too late.’[11]
It was after one performance of She Stoops that Princess Margaret came backstage. She was tiny and cool but had enjoyed the show and congratulated us. Carl Toms, who was a friend of hers, had designed the show. I knew he had been ill and, without thinking, I asked if she would pass on to him our loving best wishes. For a split second, her eyes narrowed and she stiffened: she was deciding whether I had been guilty of massive impertinence. But she saw from my concerned face that I only wanted to send Carl good wishes. She relaxed and said, ‘Yes, I will. I enjoyed your performance, rushing acraws the stage, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.’ And she smiled. The danger was over.
I have only once broken character. I was doing Dickens’ Women at the Hampstead Theatre Club and a lady in the audience had an epileptic fit. At first, I didn’t know what it was: it was a continuing snorting and growling sound. I thought, ‘Do I stop? What should I do?’ The audience was becoming restive and clearly anxious. Finally, I decided I must stop the show. I held up my hand, came to the front of the stage and said something I never thought I would say: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ And, of course, because it was Hampstead, nearly everybody stood up. The numerous doctors in the house attended to the lady, the show resumed and, I’m pleased to say, she fully recovered.
Mobile phones ringing and buzzing and beeping are another hazard. It’s disgraceful that people are allowed to bring them into the auditorium in the first place; they should be obliged to hand them into the cloakroom. When I was playing Madame Morrible in Wicked, I could see clearly when people in the audience were using their mobile phones. In the interval I would report it to the ushers, and ask them to find that person in the second row, or the upper circle, or wherever, and remove the offending article. People don’t seem to understand that if they are using their mobile they can be seen — you can see the light on the phone from the stage and it’s obvious if someone is photographing. It’s rude and horribly distracting. As actors, we are trying to create a little world for those on stage, and for the audience in the theatre. We have a pact not to tear down the walls of the little room that we’ve built for each other.
11
Sheridan Morley described me in the