Like true crime stories? Perhaps you’ve heard the one about Ken Rex McElroy, a mechanic, thief, arsonist, general low-life and town bully who terrorized the good folks of Skidmore, Missouri, for years until his unsolved murder in 1981. McElroy is the extremely ugly American who English actor-writer Jack Holden menacingly portrays along with more than a dozen other Midwest locals in Kenrex. Opening on Sunday in its U.S. premiere, Kenrex is a mostly solo play written by Holden and Ed Stambollouian, who also directs this production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Earlier this month, Holden nabbed an Olivier Award for his performance in Stambollouian’s London staging of Kenrex, as Giles Thomas also did for his multilayered sound design for the show.
Time moves nimbly back and forth over several years as the play relates the story framed through a deposition to a federal agent given by David Baird, the 30-something country prosecuting attorney involved with the people and the later events leading to McElroy’s murder. Making his American debut as a writer and actor at 36, the copper-headed Holden possesses a relatively slight though athletic, limber body that gets a major workout whenever he hurls himself amid smoke and fiery lighting through the more violent passages of Kenrex, staged in fluent surroundings designed by Anisha Fields.
Wearing plain brown pants and a white oxford shirt, sometimes donning a matching brown jacket and a necktie, Holden readily changes voices and attitudes to impersonate such Skidmore citizens as Lois and Bo Bowenkamp, the kindly, older proprietors of a grocery store; Ida Smith, described as “a Woodstock original, all rings and feathers, but with a hard edge,” who runs the only tavern; Romain Henry, a farmer with a rowdy reputation; Tim Warren, a cheerful preacher; Julie West, a blithe radio host; Steve Peter, the upbeat mayor; Trena McCloud, the 14 year-old who McElroy married after burning down her parents’ house; and several others.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★★ review here.]
As so often proves the case in crime stories, the most interesting individuals Holden presents are the bad guys. Whenever Holden transforms into McElroy, he hunches a crooked shoulder over to one side and lurches along with an ungainly yet stealthy gait; such brutish physicality recalls Lon Chaney. (No doubt there’s a Richard III in his future.) Darkening his voice, Holden gives McElroy’s every word a threatening tone. In contrast, the actor pitches his vocals and spirits sky high as ever-smiling Richard McFadin, a slick and smarmy lawyer whose egregious, flag-waving ways in the courtroom have kept McElroy out on the streets. In depicting these numerous individuals, often two person exchanges, Holden expertly makes frequent, swashbuckling use of microphones, hand-held and otherwise, in giving them voice. Physically and emotionally, Holden delivers a bravura performance, although he shows an unfortunate tendency to lick his lips as he switches among the characters.
Whether Holden’s bunch of flyover American characterizations and their local talk are consistently believable is debatable, because Kenrex is composed and forcefully staged as a thriller so there’s scant chance to question such niceties, especially whenever lighting and video designer Joshua Pharo blazes away with burning truck headlights amid rolling clouds of stage smoke. More impressive and even necessary to achieve Holden’s performance as he plays numerous characters is Giles Thomas’ award-winning sound design that incorporates a complex melding of various live and recorded voices, effects like screeching tires and gunshots, vintage records and live music. A driving force of Stambollouian’s production — as well as one of its major pleasures — is the dynamic power derived from the rhythmic folk tunes and country & western music composed and performed onstage by John Patrick Elliott upon a variety of instruments including keyboard, guitars and percussion.
While recognizing how a great deal of ingenuity and skill goes into making Kenrex an impressive achievement of sorts, I must admit to not much liking the show. Running considerably over two hours in its two-act format, Kenrex becomes too prolonged to be as effective a crime thriller as it might be. When the climax finally arrives, its dramatization seems insubstantial, particularly for viewers already familiar with the story who will learn little if anything new about the case. All that busy sound and fury whipped up by the designers gets excessive, as if to smokescreen the actor’s not always credible regional Midwest accents. Then there’s my own probably xenophobic feeling about why is this English guy and his associates making theatrical hay out of a nasty American story when they have plenty of dead bodies left to exhume at home.
Kenrex opened April 26, 2026 and runs through July 10 at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Tickets and information: kenrextheplay.com
