Reviews: Rogers v. Rogers, The Woman in Black, Holiday! and more
Michael Healey, Chris Abraham and Crow’s have another hit on their hands, while The Woman in Black and Holiday! try to elicit screams and laughter
By now it should come as no surprise that the combination of playwright Michael Healey, a hot and timely non-fiction book with relevance to Torontonians, director Chris Abraham and Crow’s Theatre will produce something exciting, thoughtful and crowd-pleasing.
It happened with The Master Plan, Healey’s adaptation of Josh O’Kane’s book about Sidewalk Labs, which broke box office records, got extended and mounted elsewhere, and won many awards. And it’s happening again now with Rogers v. Rogers (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), based on Alexandra Posadzki’s recent book Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire. Even before it opened this week, the show’s run was selling out quickly. (So far it’s been extended until Jan. 17.)
But whereas that first play was a sprawling, multi-pronged beast, featuring a cast of half a dozen actors and ticker-tape-like monitors that aided in the storytelling, this new one has been conceived as a tour-de-force solo performance for a single actor, Tom Rooney.
More than a dozen characters appear, and in one remarkable scene many of them seemingly talk to each other. In the end, though, there’s only one actor onstage. There’s significance to this, which I’ll get to later.
Just as in The Master Plan, Healey has chosen his narrator, or in this case co-narrator, wisely. Matthew Boswell is the real-life (former) Commissioner of Competition, a bureaucrat whose job it was to prevent Rogers’ acquisition of Shaw Cable in 2021, shrinking an already small series of players from four to three. It is he who outlines to us how consumers are often misled, given the illusion of competition when in fact one company owns several “competing” companies.
Boswell has a stake in the outcome of the case, of course — it’s his job. But he’s also looking out for the little guy, the person who can’t understand why he or she is spending so much on phone, cable, or internet bills.
He contrasts well with the play’s other key figure: Edward Rogers, the bumbling, socially awkward son of telecommunications giant Ted Rogers. Edward just assumes he’s next in line to run the company after his father passes away in 2008. (Although the play is obviously based on real events, we’re told from the outset that it is fiction.)
In one way, Rogers v. Rogers can be seen as a Canadian version of TV’s Succession, with Edward biding his time on the company’s board while first one, and then another, non-family member takes the top job of CEO. His seething, chain-smoking mother, Loretta, and siblings Martha and Melinda, bicker on the sidelines. The division between them is so extreme that when Loretta was on her deathbed, she refused to talk to, or see, Edward.