Winning ugly: Rogers v. Rogers is a masterpiece of competition policy as entertainment

The one-man play voices Canadians' frustration with corporate concentration while expertly poking fun at it and humanizing the individuals involved

Tom Rooney as Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell (handout).

I went into a preview showing of the Rogers v. Rogers play last week not quite knowing what to expect, but I definitely wasn’t planning on jumping out of my seat with rapturous applause at the end of it. Yet, along with the other 200 people in attendance, that’s exactly what I did.

The TL:DR version is simply this: Run, don’t walk to see this one-man show, playing now and into January at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. Actually, scratch that. Don’t just run – if you’re reading this here at Do Not Pass Go, you’re already on board with the subject matter and are probably going to want to trample over everyone in the way if you have to.

And you might have to… more on that, plus the play’s likely expansion across Canada below.

Rogers v. Rogers, written by prolific playwright Michael Healey and brought to life by one-man acting army Tom Rooney, is based on the award-winning 2024 book of the same name by Globe and Mail reporter Alexandra Posadzki.

The book documents in detail the history and rise of Canada’s largest cable and wireless empire, but especially the twin dramas of the past few years in which family scion Edward Rogers simultaneously engineered both a coup for control of the company and the largest corporate takeover in the nation’s history, the $26 billion acquisition of Shaw Communications.

As Healey explains on the Do Not Pass Go podcast, the book became a play in his mind at the point where the Competition Bureau got involved, when it tried to stop that takeover. (Story continues below)

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It’s here that Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell entered the story to become the avatar of the Canadian public’s visceral opposition to the deal in the first place and its helpless contempt for big telcos and oligopolies overall.

While the book narrates the story straight, the play leans heavily into the competition problems underlying both the Rogers transaction and Canada in general. Boswell is the unequivocal hero of Healey’s show, acting as an avatar for his and Canadians’ frustration with the monolithic, Kafkaesque nightmare of a supposed market that they are forced to put up with on a daily basis, not just in telecom but across the board.

Rooney’s Boswell – the actor deftly plays all the characters without missing a beat, with some help from lighting cues and props – evinces many moments of a-ha catharsis from an all-too-knowing audience as a result.

In one exchange between Edward and Boswell, for example, the Rogers chief tells the commissioner to contact the company’s agents to get a better deal on his cellphone plan. Boswell hilariously channels the audience’s exasperated disbelief with his response: “Have you ever called Rogers’ customer service?!?”

While Boswell is the beleaguered protagonist of this story, Edward – or anyone in the Rogers family, for that matter – is perhaps surprisingly not the clear villain. There is someone who may take that role, but we’ll get back to that.

Edward is very much a sympathetic character, as is deceased company founder and his father Ted, with both portrayed as victims and products of harsh, unrelenting parents. Ted, we’re told, was shipped off as a boy to a boarding school just a short walk from his family house, but he was never allowed to come home despite his sickliness.

Edward, in turn, is constantly told he’s a disappointment and passed over by Ted for important positions within the company.

Rooney’s Edward speaks with an unsure half-stutter that reminded me, of all things, of Morty, the sad-sack child sidekick to the mad scientist protagonist on Rick & Morty. Once I made the mental connection to the animated show, it was hard to see Edward as anything but a hapless bystander to the other characters as they played out the Shaw takeover.

In that way, he’s also like Kendall Roy from HBO’s Succession, the show that the real-life Rogers family saga has often been compared to. Kendall similarly suffers beneath a disapproving, overbearing father, but he continues to try to win his approval anyway. Edward’s arc runs parallel, complete with substance abuse – though in this play he substitutes food (and McDonald’s soft drinks) for the Roy heir’s drugs.

In the end, Edward gets everything he wants. As anyone who followed the real events knows, he ousts his mother, sisters and Ted’s old guard from the Rogers board to assume total control over the company, and he defeats the Competition Bureau to secure the Shaw prize. In doing so, he does what his father never could and effectively exorcises his beyond-the-grave hold on the company in the process.

In losing, Boswell suggests the story’s actual villain: Francois-Phillipe Champagne, the Industry Minister who approved Rogers’ acquisition against his own Bureau’s advice and the public’s overwhelming opposition to it.

It’s here that a work of fictionalized history is able to comment on real events in a way that journalists generally can’t. Through his version of Boswell, Healey conveys disgust at how Champagne sabotaged the Bureau just days before court arguments were set to begin by announcing that he would not allow Shaw to include its wireless assets as part of the Rogers deal.

In doing so, the minister effectively outlined the conditions under which he would accept the transaction – that Rogers merely had to sell off Shaw’s Freedom Mobile wireless business – which ultimately cut the Bureau’s court challenge off at the knees.

Whether or not the real Boswell ever thought it, he definitely never said it publicly - thereby leaving Healey’s fictionalized version of the commissioner to summarize what Champagne did in no uncertain terms: “He fucking fucked us.” (Story continues below)

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Rogers v. Rogers pulls no punches and, though it humanizes Edward and the rest of the Rogers gang, it certainly doesn’t make any of them look good. It made me wonder if legal action might be in the offing even though such art is protected as satire. Healey tells me he has yet to receive any threats and would be surprised if the company wanted to risk the public scrutiny that would accompany such a move.

Aside from being knee-slapping hilarious – watching Rooney pull off a Zoom call with the entire Rogers board while playing every character on it has to be seen to be believed – and cathartic for anyone who is a long-suffering consumer (who isn’t?), Rogers v. Rogers is also exquisitely written, to the point of heart-wrenching.

In their final interaction, Edward unwittingly highlights the parallels between himself and Boswell. While the Rogers son has achieved all his goals, at the end of the story he is isolated, not even allowed to say goodbye to a dying mother who is sickened by his actions. The commissioner, meanwhile, may have failed to prevent the Shaw deal but he was able to use it to push through a host of needed reforms to Canada’s outdated competition laws.

“We both won ugly, didn’t we?” Edward says to him.

Aside from that, the message that stuck with me most was Boswell’s soliloquy as he regards a funeral home bill following his father’s passing. He is dismayed to see that the charges are three times higher than they were just 18 months prior, when he paid for the same services following his mother’s death. The jacked-up price is the result of a public equity firm buying up all the funeral homes in town in the intervening time period.

“That sadness, that feeling was taken from me by a number,” he says angrily.

Healey says he made this part up – that he has fiddled with many details and the audience should consult the book for the actual facts. But the message behind the soliloquy is real: this sort of thing is happening – not just in telecom, but everywhere, with everything. The walls are closing in on regular people, freedom of choice is being taken away and the public is paying the price – literally.

The last note of the play isn’t so dire, though. Healey’s final message is that seemingly minor actions – what feels like screaming into a void – can add up and result in legitimate change, so it’s up to every person to fight. And, as his Boswell cheekily suggests to end the show, maybe we should all consider switching to Freedom Mobile.

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This review is based on a preview. Rogers v. Rogers was originally supposed to run at Crow’s Theatre through December, but its quick sell-out has already prompted an extension into January. Tickets are still available for the extra shows, before the play moves to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg on Feb. 18.

On last week’s Do Not Pass Go podcast, Healey talks about the likelihood of the play being picked up and touring the rest of the country once Rooney finishes his summer commitments, so stay tuned for other city announcements.

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