He inspired one of the characters in the satirical hit play ‘Rogers v. Rogers’ — and ‘absolutely loved’ how he’s portrayed

As son Edward (who now runs the company) sought to merge Rogers Communications with Shaw, which would increase its monopoly and keep Canadians’ cellphone and internet plans sky high, Boswell and his team at the competition bureau were trying to prevent it.

Healey, who adapted the play from Alexandra Posadzki’s book “Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire,” finds moving parallels between the ultra privileged Rogers nepo baby and the underdog bureaucrat Boswell.

Boswell didn’t know any of this going into the play. Although he’d talked in person or on the phone with Healey a couple of times and answered half a dozen email queries, he declined reading any early drafts of the script.

“There are very few opportunities in life to be truly surprised,” he said on a recent Zoom call from his home in Ottawa.

“There’s the gender of your kids, but I can’t think of much else. And this seemed to be something that might be on that list. Maybe it was stupid, but I thought, ‘What the heck? Let’s just see what it’s like when I show up.’”

He had another consideration, as well. He didn’t want to be in the position of having to point out if this or that detail wasn’t right, or entirely factual.

“I went in knowing it was fiction,” said Boswell. “I don’t think the people who had the job before me would ever have agreed to go meet a playwright.”

And what did he end up thinking?

“I absolutely loved it,” he said. “It was so entertaining and also interesting. They did a great job of raising some important societal and economic issues about competition. And I thought Tom Rooney’s performance was an incredible feat. I occasionally go to plays, but I didn’t know what to expect from a one-person show. And it was brilliant.”

For Healey’s part, after Chris Abraham, Crow’s Theatre artistic director, gave him Posadzki’s book to consider as a followup to their hugely successful “The Master Plan” (also based on a non-fiction book, Josh O’Kane’s “Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy”), he didn’t initially think it was theatre material.

And then, at around page 300, Boswell showed up and Healey saw some potential.

“We so rarely get access to what our betters get up to, so I really enjoyed the first 280 pages of the book,” said Healey on the same Zoom call, while vacationing in sunny Costa Rica.

“But when Matthew showed up and we got into the public policy consequences of not only the series of decisions that have created the telecom industry as it exists in Canada now, but also why a family like the Rogers family is so privileged and cosseted. And that’s when things clicked into place. When Matthew showed up and started tilting at windmills, when he decided that he was going to do everything to stop this merger, that’s when I saw the play.

“Here was a public servant setting out to do something extraordinarily difficult on the public’s behalf, contrasted with Edward Rogers attempting to do something difficult but on his own, for himself.”

In the play, there’s an ongoing joke about Boswell needing therapy to help him deal with the stress of the high-profile Rogers case. The script also deals with the deaths of Boswell’s parents and his reaction to both events.

“All of that was fictionalized,” said Healey. “I have no idea if Matthew has ever done any kind of therapy whatsoever. And I reversed the order of the deaths of Matthew’s parents to suit my needs.”

“The therapy and counselling jokes add to the entertainment,” laughed Boswell. “And to be fair, I discussed the very serious idea about post traumatic stress disorder coming out of the Rogers Shaw saga, not just for me but for others at the bureau. So I understood where that came from.”

If there’s one thing that everyone who sees the play — which, by the way, is completely sold out — agrees on, it’s that actor Rooney is astonishing, humanizing every character, including the entitled Rogers clan.

“I was relieved when I heard Matthew liked the play,” said Rooney, on a separate Zoom call. The two never met and the actor didn’t study any video interview footage of him before playing him.

“Obviously, there are factual elements of his story and what happened to him in it, but Michael took liberties in telling them. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to try to imitate anyone. My performance was going to come through the story that Michael wanted to tell.”

Rooney got a big surprise when Boswell invited dozens of his friends and colleagues, many of whom had worked with him at the competition bureau, to the show’s final preview.

“Before doing this play, I didn’t even know that a commissioner of competition existed,” said Rooney. “And so there was something really special about doing a show for these particular people, to make them feel seen and recognized, and to hear their responses.”

Boswell vividly remembers that night with his colleagues who, in the end, collectively helped change the Competition Act with amendments that help protect the public.

“They were all trying to control their laughter the first time Tom did a ‘Matt Boswell rant.’ He nailed it, with all the expletives and me going off. When I was talking with Michael, I must have gone on a couple of rants and he passed on what that felt like to Tom. He did a great job of capturing me.”

“Rogers v. Rogers” continues until Jan. 17 at Streetcar Crowsnest’s Guloien Theatre, 345 Carlaw Ave. Advance tickets are sold out, but you can visit crowstheatre.com for wait-list information.