Trailer for Rogers vs Rogers
Crow’s Theatre’s production Rogers vs Rogers announces itself like a 90-minute comedic rap , but what unfolds is less a work of dramatic interpretation than an extended exercise in ideological caricature. The production claims lineage from a family story, yet quickly abandons it, weaponizing its source material into something barely recognizable — a blunt anti-corporate, anti-capitalist takedown that substitutes complexity with slogan.
The play treats the creation of Canada itself as little more than a corporate conspiracy, recasting the rise of entrepreneurial families not as nation-building enterprises but as morally suspect dynasties whose success is portrayed as inherently illegitimate. In this telling, founders are not builders; they are
villains. Their children are not heirs wrestling with inheritance and responsibility; they are insipid beneficiaries of a rigged system. It is history flattened into grievance. What might have been a nuanced examination of family, power, and succession instead becomes a broad ideological indictment. Characters are inflated into heroes or villains according to political convenience rather than lived truth. Several figures, long embedded in the Rogers ecosystem, are elevated as principled outsiders, while others — including a bureaucrat who spent decades in obscurity — are transformed into heroic figures, apparently rewarded for finally finding their moment in the spotlight. The line between biography and fantasy dissolves.
The production gestures toward “good governance,” but only when that concept serves its narrative agenda. Governance is praised when it undermines corporate authority, and ignored when it complicates the play’s moral simplicity. The result is not critique, but selective morality. Stylistically, the relentless rap format — a torrent of cheap-shot one-liners and venomous asides — substitutes speed for substance. The script rarely pauses long enough to let an idea breathe. Insults arrive faster than insight. One character blurs into the next, voices merging into a single accusatory tone. Satire requires precision; this production prefers volume.
Worse, the play occasionally trivializes real human pain. Childhood traumas and food addictions are deployed not as moments worthy of empathy, but as comic ammunition. These are not explored; they are mocked. The audience is invited to laugh, not understand. Theatre can interrogate suffering — but here it uses it as decorative cruelty.
The ideological framing is unmistakable: a left-wing elite fantasy in which corporations are inherently evil, founders are morally suspect, and their descendants are spiritually hollow. The play mocks not only wealth, but the very idea that family dynasties might have played a constructive role in building a country. The message is clear: entrepreneurial legacy is fraud, leadership is theatre, and success is theft disguised as merit.
Ironically, for a production that condemns corporate storytelling, Rogers vs Rogers adopts its own version of brand theatre: bold, loud, simplified, and emotionally manipulative. It sells certainty, not inquiry. Crow’s Theatre has built its reputation on risk, intelligence, and emotional honesty. This production risks only its own subtlety. It chooses mockery over insight, ideology over ambiguity, and performance over truth. There is a powerful play buried somewhere inside this story — one about family, succession, power, failure, loyalty, and inheritance in modern Canada. But that play is not the one presented here. Instead, we are given a clever, noisy, politically fashionable caricature that mistakes confidence for depth.
Rogers vs Rogers is not without energy, nor without moments of sharp wit. But energy is not insight, and wit is not wisdom. In the end, the production feels less like theatre and more like a cultural verdict already decided — delivered loudly, rapidly, and without the humility that real storytelling demands.