THE one-man show is the Round The World solo yacht race of the theatre, and Edward Petherbridge's maiden voyage is long enough to take him around the globe and on to the morning beyond.

Three hours in the charming company of the veteran Bradford thespian is a little long: whatever the role of artistic advisor and producer Jude Kelly, her brief does not appear to have included clock-watching or time and motion.

Yet there is no denying that Defending Jeffrey...?, is a tour de force for Petherbridge, actor, writer, and now painted clown and painter too.

Note the dot dot dot and question mark in the play's title. This is a lateral think piece, the rambling yet finally focused thoughts brought on by Petherbridge's experience of performing alongside the disgraced Tory not-so-grandee Jeffrey Archer in Archer's play The Accused at the Cambridge Theatre, London.

Petherbridge had been so unsettled by playing Lord Archer's defence lawyer that he let his pen flow in a stream of consciousness. This has resulted in a discursive "one-man courtroom drama", full of ruminations on everything from the ultimate ruminator Hamlet, to his relationship with his own father.

Ultimately, what Petherbridge puts in the dock is not that regular court frequenter, Lord Archer, but the actor's eternal search for truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in his craft and his life.

Jeffrey had asked Edward for acting tips for The Accused; Petherbridge recalls he "wasn't very good at tips", but now goes on to deliver what he calls a lecture demonstration, "a sort of feng shui guide to getting at the truth in the theatre". The tenets of feng shui would probably demand removing some of the clutter of Petherbridge's witty, warm and sometimes withering piece; his difficulty will be in deciding precisely what to remove!

So far, this review might suggest Defending Jeffrey...? is a mental exercise but it is as much a physical display from the moment the admirably slim and supple Petherbridge announces his arrival on a hoist.

Raiding his back catalogue from his student days, his catwalk of skills encompasses the Laban system of ballet; puppetry; mask work; performance art; Pierrot clowning and even stage design and interior decoration. Most memorably, he turns painter to mimic the splish-splash of Jackson Pollock and to knock up a giant fake version of Monet's painting of the Houses of Parliament.

Yet for all this bravura physicality, it is the breadth of reference, from Richard II to Kim Philby, from Van Gogh to the Millennium Bridge, that holds the interest.

The verdict: Edward Petherbridge is guilty of rivalling Steven Berkoff and Ken Campbell as a master of the one-man show.