West End hosts Maxwell play

A play about the late, disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell is coming to the West End in the new year.

Lies Have Been Told: An Evening With Robert Maxwell by playwright Rod Beacham, will play at the Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, for a limited three-week run next month. It has previously been staged at fringe venues in the capital.

Philip York plays Maxwell, former owner of the Mirror Group, who fell off his yacht in the Canaries after siphoning millions from the newspaper's pension fund.

Although the one-man-show is unauthorised by the Maxwell family, its producer, Dale Djerassi, used to be married to Isabel, Robert Maxwell's daughter, and the pair have a 20-yearold son. Members of the Maxwell family went to see the play at the Edinburgh Festival in 2003.

A spokesman for the production denied that it painted too favourable a picture of Maxwell: "It doesn't whitewash him. I think the Maxwells liked it because their kids got to see another side of their grandfather."