England to Try to Halt Maxwell Musical : Law: Injunction will be sought due to fairness concerns in the upcoming trial of the late media baron’s sons.

The attorney general of England will apply for an injunction Monday to stop the opening of a stage musical in London’s West End theater district about the late press baron Robert Maxwell because of fears that the show will prejudice the forthcoming criminal trial of Maxwell’s sons, Kevin and Ian.

“Maxwell: The Musical Review,” starring British actor John Savident in the title role, features 14 Gilbert and Sullivan songs set to new lyrics, and is being produced by Evan Steadman, a former Maxwell employee who says he is using money he made from Maxwell to finance the satirical work.

Steadman has previously backed musicals, including a London production of “Me and My Girl.” He said he will fight the injunction and continue with plans to begin previews Feb. 11, with the show’s opening scheduled for Feb. 21.

Maxwell’s sons have pleaded not guilty to an assortment of fraud charges related to the running of their father’s business empire, which included the Mirror Group newspapers in Great Britain, the Daily News in New York, the Macmillan publishing house, newspapers in Eastern Europe and Africa and British soccer teams.

After Robert Maxwell fell from his yacht and drowned in November, 1991, it was discovered that he had illegally removed about $600 million in Mirror Group pension funds as part of a massive shell game to prop up the heavily indebted private side of his business holdings.

No trial date has been set for the Maxwell brothers and four other defendants charged in the case.

The attorney general’s office and lawyers acting for Kevin Maxwell both declined to comment about the move to stop the musical, which is believed to be the first case of its kind in Great Britain.

Steadman, who says he has invested $1.65 million in the show, said he had been notified by Kevin Maxwell’s lawyers last September that they were considering seeking an injunction, but he says he had not heard anything else about it until the attorney general’s announcement.

The producer says he dreamed up the idea for the show while working for Maxwell and observing firsthand the tycoon’s corporate universe of bullying and paranoia. Steadman sold his communications companies to Maxwell five years ago for nearly $25 million and became chairman of the Maxwell Business Communications Group. After arriving in Maxwell’s Byzantine empire, Steadman recalls, he thought to himself, “This is comic opera.” Updated Gilbert and Sullivan.

He immediately jotted down a bit of lyric: “I am the very model of a modern megalomaniac.”

“It’s 85% lampoon and 15% deadly serious,” says Steadman, sitting in a church basement where the cast is rehearsing. But, despite the mirth, he says, audiences will find the show disturbing. “As it ends, they are going to be very angry.”

The show moves through various stages of Maxwell’s life and career, each designed to reveal the inner workings of the larger-than-life character.

Born Jan Ludvik Hoch to a poor Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, Maxwell lost most of his family in the Holocaust and wound up a decorated captain in the British forces.

The musical “starts with our discovery of Maxwell as a commissioned officer,” says Steadman. “But, really, that’s a device to show that he changed his name six times before becoming Robert Maxwell.”

Despite Maxwell’s tragic beginnings, Steadman says there can be no sympathy for him. “Sympathy has nothing to do with it,” he says. “He made his own decisions, and they were anti-social decisions.”

Although Maxwell’s death in the waters off the Canary Islands was considered an accident when it occurred, it is now widely assumed he committed suicide with the knowledge that his deception was about to be exposed.

The question now is, even if the court lets the show go on, will anyone want to sit through it? Steadman is circumspect.

“We know it will run for the first couple of months because there were a lot of people who were touched by Maxwell or were involved with businesses that were touched by Maxwell,” he says. “He had 30,000 employees to start with, so there’s those 30,000 and their families. But I don’t kid myself that it will last beyond the point of those people you would expect to be interested. Unless, of course, it’s a bloody good show.”

If the show is a success, Steadman plans to bring it to New York, where Maxwell made a name for himself as the “savior” of the Daily News.

But if, as is statistically more likely, it flops, Steadman says he isn’t going to worry about it. “I’ve got money to spend on anything I want to spend it on,” he says. “So here it is. This is what I want to spend it on.”