If you’re not a news junkie, the name Rebekah Brooks may not ring a bell. Not terribly long ago, in 2011, Ms. Brooks emerged as the principal villainess in a phone hacking scandal that rocked News International, as the British newspaper publisher and subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was then known.

Ms. Brooks was the company’s chief executive at the time, having earlier worked her way up from a secretarial position to become editor of News of the World and then the Sun, two of Mr. Murdoch’s U.K. publications. Yet when articles published in the Guardian spurred a new inquiry into investigations stretching back to the late 1990s, it was disclosed that News of the World and other News International tabloids had not only invaded the privacy of public figures and ordinary citizens during her tenure, but had indulged in criminal activity to suppress evidence.

If that doesn’t strike you as a sexy premise for a play, you’re either unfamiliar with or can’t remember the cast of characters involved in the scandal, from a vast array of celebrity victims and advocates to Ms. Brooks herself, the woman whose mop of red curls and imperious, eerily unruffled expression always suggested, at least for me, how Botticelli might have painted Satan.

Few of the put-upon or outraged celebs involved in the case pop up in J.T. Rogers’s latest work, “Corruption” — Hugh Jackman and George Michael are mentioned, and the latter’s music is cleverly incorporated — but Ms. Brooks is a key player. The protagonist and hero, though, is Tom Watson, the member of Parliament who, while seated on the House of Commons’s Culture, Media, and Sport Committee, helped bring her down, at least for a while.

A book that Mr. Watson wrote with journalist Martin Hickman, “Dial M For Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain,” served as the basis for this project, which reunites Mr. Rogers with the director Bartlett Sher, his collaborator on the Tony Award-winning “Oslo.” That play followed diplomats and politicians as they struggled to forge the fragile agreements established between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in another century that now seems very long ago.

In “Corruption,” which also surveys ethical questions posed by the British media’s role in influence-peddling — a topic that got less attention in some American coverage of the scandal — the focus is on politicians and journalists, and thus diplomacy is less of a factor. The redoubtable Dylan Baker appears as the coolest character, Tom Crone, the News International barrister who resigned during the scandal.

In the play, the lawyer is called on to calmly keep both Rebekah and James Murdoch, Rupert’s son and then the head of News Corp (crisply played by Seth Numrich), in touch with reality — “Be that as it may,” he says repeatedly, in conversations with each or both of them — as it gradually turns against them.

Rebekah is played by the British actress Saffron Burrows, a sultry beauty who cuts a far more glamorous figure than her real-life counterpart did, in my recollection. Yet Ms. Burrows summons an icy, intimidating charisma that suits the role, and convincingly reveals cracks in that cold exterior as Rebekah’s initial indignation devolves into panic.

Toby Stephens proves a fine foil as Tom Watson, depicted here as aggressively righteous and often hotheaded. Mr. Rogers has included his wife, Siobhan, in the story as well, though she emerges as less a person than a rather patronizing paragon of female sacrifice and virtue: Rebekah’s polar opposite. Gamely played by Robyn Kerr, Siobhan is frustrated and feisty but loving and pragmatic — wiser, in her fashion, than her accomplished husband, whom she warns, “You take Rebekah Brooks on again, and she will destroy you. And our family.”

“Corruption” is further marred, as “Oslo” was, by dialogue that can border on speechifying, even when the characters aren’t delivering prepared remarks. But once again, the writing is smart and juicy, and Mr. Sher provides predictably sharp, vigorous guidance to a superb cast. The other actors, many of whom juggle several roles, include T. Ryder Smith, witty and gritty as Guardian journalist Nick Davies, and Michael Siberry, delectably mischievous as Max Mosley, a racing driver, attorney, and businessman whom News of the World implicated in salacious and damning reportage. 

A tart Eleanor Handley shows up as Jo Becker, a New York Times reporter who contributed to that paper’s coverage of the phone hacking scandal. In one of the play’s most riveting scenes, Mr. Stephens’s Tom explains to her how the unsavory shenanigans of the British tabloids constitute a “seeping moral rot” unfamiliar to most Americans.

More than 10 years after the events in “Corruption” unfolded, with social and other digital media increasingly erasing borders, that rot has only continued to spread. At its invigorating best, this play inspires reflection even as it briskly entertains us.