Stephen Mangan, actor
On stage and in his dressing room at the Duke of York's theatre, London WC2, before and after a performance of Jeeves & Wooster: Perfect Nonsense. The show won best comedy at this year's Olivier awards, and is now playing with a new cast.
You can tell exactly what kind of an audience you're going to get by listening as they come in. For this show, I come out on stage a few minutes before the start, and stand behind the curtains – that's where I am in the "before" picture. If I can hear a lot of shrieky laughter, I know I'm in for a boisterous crowd. But if they're hushed and reverent, I know I might have to work harder.
It's both nerve-racking and thrilling to know that any minute the curtain's going to go up, and all those people are suddenly going to go quiet and stare at you. But after six months of doing the same show eight times a week, the bigger challenge is getting yourself into exactly the same mental state every night. You come to the theatre with whatever anxieties or triumphs the day has brought, and there are times when you really don't want to be there. But the fact that 700 people are waiting to see what you've got is a great motivating factor.
Preparing for a performance is a bit like putting a child to bed: you follow the same routine every night. For an evening show, I get to the theatre at about 6.30pm and say hello to the rest of the cast. Then I plaster my hair down into Bertie Wooster's savage side parting: it's a bit of a wrestling match. I listen to Spotify in my dressing room – bouncy, high-energy music to get me into the character's Tiggerish state of mind. The last track I put on is the theme from the Muppets – Bertie is kind of a muppet, after all.
By the end of the show, I'm usually in a pretty grim state. I'm drenched in sweat – I've spent two hours running around, leaping over beds and windows, in a three-piece suit and overcoat. It's a great workout – I've lost a stone and a half – but it's exhausting. With tragedy, you come off feeling exhilarated. But with comedy, you have to throw out a huge amount of energy. You work your arse off, basically – and if it's a matinee, you have to do it all again in a few hours' time.
