Terence Corcoran: The new Rogers v. Rogers play gets a BS rating
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Including the glorification of Canada’s competition chiefYou can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.The new “Rogers v. Rogers” play is f—ing bull—t. Apologies for the bad language, but that’s the high-end literary lingo that usually dominates plays that hit the local stages of Toronto’s woke theatre scene. As the major themes often revolve around DEI, gender and other trendy causes, F-words often abound.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.As they do in a new play, Rogers v. Rogers, which opened last week at Crow’s Theatre, one of a number of theatre organizations in the city that specialize in unravelling the great social and political issues facing our world. Rogers v. Rogers is slightly different. Its main targets are capitalism, corporations, and the self-serving manipulative control freaks who run the economic system.The play is described by Crow’s executive team as a “satirical work of fiction” based on the real-life story behind one of Canada’s more sensational corporate sagas, the two-year-long $26-billion battle by Toronto-based telecom giant Rogers Communications to take over Calgary-based Shaw Communications.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againInterested in more newsletters? Browse here.Crow’s executive team says the story is “based on real events” documented by Globe and Mail journalist Alexandra Posadzki in her best-selling book of the same name, subtitled “The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire.” Playgoers are forewarned, however, that in the satirical work of fiction, facts have been “nudged,” conversations “invented” and reality “adjusted” whenever it did not coincide with the fictional story created by playwright Michael Healey.On the surface, Healey’s work is a clever creation in which one actor, Canadian theatre veteran Tom Rooney, brilliantly portrays more than a dozen characters through 90 non-stop minutes on stage. Circling a boardroom table, Rooney instantly transforms in and out of a series of caricatures of infighting Rogers family members — including corporate founder Ted and his wife Loretta, his son Edward (current executive CEO of Rogers) and daughter Martha — as they battle internally and externally throughout the play.The Rogers family corporate control battles have been regularly compared with Succession, the award-winning HBO TV series. The trouble with the Rogers family saga is that it is often a boring story filled with complicated personalities, corporate strategies, and family and executive squabbles.To solve the boring story problem, Healey tries to turn it into an entertaining Succession-style production. It’s a tricky proposition. Boring is not fun or funny — unless it can be boosted into comedy by incorporating the ubiquitous modern comedy technique, application of the f-word. It appears only once in Posadzki’s 400-page book, part of a short one-paragraph sidebar story. Nobody ever swears. My f-word tracking machine wasn’t functioning as I watched the play, but I would say it came up a couple of dozen times, often used for humorous effect at key moments in the story — much to the delight of the audience.The Rogers family members are all more or less made to look like unworthy corporate players among a collection of outside executives who are constantly gaming one another and the system for their own interests. The play does have a hero, however.
Enter Matthew Boswell, Ottawa’s competition commissioner.The play opens with Rooney, representing Boswell, delivering a lengthy monologue on competition law. ”Who here has working knowledge of the Competition Act of 1985?” Laughter. Then he implies that since the founding of the Hudson’s Bay Company more than three centuries ago, Canada has been ruled by monopolies that today continue to be created via mergers such as the Rogers/Shaw deal. Canada is run by corporations that sell $4 tomatoes and pricey cellphone service. It all amounts to a “loss of freedom” and a “loss of liberty.”Boswell is the intended hero of playwright Healey’s 90-minute production. In a BNN Bloomberg interview last week, Healey said his objective is to expose “the folks that are running our lives, to some extent, in a kind of unguarded way.” Rogers v. Rogers is a “vehicle to examine corporate concentration in the country.” The logos of scores of companies appear on a screen, including Canadian Tire, which is cited as a company that gives “the illusion of competition.”This, along with other statements by Rooney’s Boswell, is bull—t. Canadian Tire is a company that thrives by effectively competing against big-name U.S. retailers and online operators.As for Boswell, his attempt to block the Shaw merger was shot down by the Competition Tribunal, which also effectively fined the commissioner’s office by ordering it to pay $13 million to Rogers for costs incurred defending its merger against what the tribunal described as “serious unreasonable behaviour.”Also missing in the background is that Rogers v. Rogers is sponsored by Anthony Lacavera, a telco executive who fought Rogers over the Shaw deal and wanted a piece of the action. Like Healey, he claimed Ottawa was “significantly and easily outmanoeuvred by the telecom oligopoly.” The Toronto theatre crowd doesn’t seem to mind corporate involvement in its own operations.The Rogers v. Rogers run at Crow’s Theatre is mostly sold out through to the end of 2025, and runs to Jan. 17. Toronto reviewers loved the play — even though it is f—-ing bull—t. Isn’t that funny?• Email: tcorcoran@postmedia.com Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.