My Perfect Mind
Young Vic London SE1
3 stars

THIS autobiographical comedy takes us on a tongue-in-cheek stumble, on a tilted stage, through the long career and near-death of Shakespearean actor Edward Petherbridge.

Directed by Kathryn Hunter and co-starring Paul Hunter — who plays everyone else in the double act  — it uses Petherbridge’s real-life stroke during his 2007 New Zealand tour in the role of King Lear to illuminate his fall from grace.

It’s a slapstick, wry and occasionally moving look behind the curtain into the world of luvvie-dom and what happens when age and illness rob an actor of his physical and mental powers.

A series of theatrical in-jokes, nods and big fat winks are interspersed with the tragi-comic Lear rehearsals, with the famous Shakespearean scenes giving a nod to Petherbridge’s own demons and frailties.

Hunter hams it up as a German psychology professor with a dodgy accent and even dodgier wig, dons marigolds as a Romanian Shakespeare professor-turned-cleaner and enjoys the play’s best lines as Sir Laurence Olivier, offering sage advice to the actor  as he lurches around the stage with a Richard III-hunch while still partially blacked up for Othello in the National Theatre canteen.

About mid-way through the wacky format and knowing style begin to wear thin and we are in need of some emotional depth to make us care about this ageing actor.

The question arises — how much does it matter that he’s not actually playing Lear but only in rehearsals in his mind?

The answer arrives in the third act as Petherbridge turns artist, painting himself as Lear next to the king’s daughters Cordelia and Goneril in bold black strokes on a huge white canvass.

It’s impressive and effective. We feel his vulnerability and turmoil as he flashes back to a not entirely blissful childhood in Bradford, with a mother also crippled by a stroke, and his first tentative steps on stage at a Bridlington talent show.

In the end, sitting next to Hunter, utterly himself, we feel we know him and even love him.

Runs until September 27, box office: youngvic.org