WHEN classical actor Edward Petherbridge suffered a stroke two days into rehearsals for King Lear, he thought he would never get the chance to play Shakespeare’s tragic monarch.

But in this fabulously funny two-man show he gets that chance – sort of.

My Perfect Mind takes the audience on a surreal journey through the synapses of Petherbridge’s brain, with moments of flashing brilliance as they shift inventively between fact and fiction.

The debonair Petherbridge is a softly-spoken, almost vague presence as the Edward Petherbridge of the production, but shows why he has proved popular at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He shows a great sense of humour in his ability to laugh at his thespy image.

Paul Hunter is genius as everybody else. Taking on a host of characters including a German lecturer, an Irish cabbie, Laurence Olivier, the New Zealand director who asked Petherbridge to play Lear and Petherbridge’s mother, he delivers most of the show’s physical and verbal comic moments, which had the audience laughing heartily throughout.

With a lot of in jokes about Olivier and theatre in general, the show might be a bit too luvvy for some, but this is a light-hearted look at Petherbridge’s experience that will see you leaving the theatre smiling.

Corey Ross