Lies Have Been Told

The highest tribute I can pay to this one man play about the notorious Robert Maxwell is that I really felt I had spent ninety minutes in the media tycoon’s presence. Philip York is aided in achieving this by his marked physical (at least facial) resemblance to the man, and excellent vocal mimicry. But it goes beyond that. York’s performance is astonishingly brave, as he addresses the audience with steely gaze, poised, still, superior. He asks them questions, bullies them, charms them, defying them to question his version of events. It is, one assumes, what the man himself would do were he given a platform like this to defend himself and tell us about his life.

And what an extraordinary life it was. Born the son of a Jewish cattle dealer in Czechoslovakia, he lost most of his family to the Nazis. He himself escaped to become a hero, first of the resistance and then he British army. Montgomery himself pinned the military cross on his chest. Rod Beacham’s script cleverly takes us through this and Maxwell’s subsequent quest to become proprietor of newspaper after newspaper and for acceptance by the British establishment without making it sound like a chronological list of events. Indeed, this feels like a proper play, not just a monologue, even though York isn’t asked to take on a myriad of other roles. But he makes the other players in his story live as he recalls them, movingly as in the case of his murdered mother, or amusingly as when he first hears the name of the man who has gazumped his attempt to buy The News of the World: “Who the fuck is Rupert Murdoch?”

Director Alan Dossor has staged things cleverly, and must take some credit for his actor’s astonishing performance, something the public don’t always appreciate. Together they have managed to establish the almost Shakespearean nature of this tale, Maxwell’s tragic flaw, by his own admission, being greed.

Not that it’s at all doom and gloom. There are many laugh-out loud moments, even in the great man’s explanation of what actually happened the night he fell off his boat to his death in 1991. Actually he gives three explanations, making the point that we’ll never know what really happened. This is a fitting end to the play, which is essentially about how easily people will believe what they’re told. From a newspaper headline to a history book nothing is certain.

What is certain is that Maxwell escaped jail by drowning, as his embezzlement of millions and millions of pounds from the Daily Mirror pension fund, in a futile attempt to stave off the ruin of his media empire, was about to be uncovered. Even here he stands there and defies us to say that we wouldn’t have done the same, that he had the interests of his employees at heart, that not a penny of it went into his pocket. Maxwell’s charisma is undeniable, his charm manifest, his…..

But it’s not him. It’s an actor. Keep reminding yourself of that if you go. And if you don’t go, you’ll miss the treat of the Festival.