ajhlovestheatre

KENREX

written by Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian

music composed and performed by John Patrick Elliott

directed by Ed Stamboullouian

Southwark Playhouse, Borough – London, until 15 March 2025

running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including interval 

https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/kenrex/

Reviewing theatre is a privilege and a challenge. Usually the challenge is to pick apart what works and what doesn’t about a production. But what about when a production is so good that not only do you have no criticisms, but you seriously doubt that you have sufficient superlatives? Kenrex is one such show. Billed as “a true crime thriller”, Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian’s genre-busting, technically breathtaking (on every level) piece is so much more than that. 

Performer and co-writer Jack Holden and his genius composer, musician and co-star John Patrick Elliott have form when it comes to shapeshifting almost-monologues, having been responsible for 2021’s Cruise, an evocative trawl through AIDS-era gay Soho that had audiences and critics on their feet in the wake of the pandemic. Brilliant as that was, Kenrex, apparently seven years in the making, is next level magnificent. Co-writer and director Ed Stamboullouian is now on board and drives Holden to even more ambitious heights of storytelling and characterisation, in a staging that takes elements of podcast, thriller, western, rock musical, performance art, stand-up comedy and even classical tragedy, and fuses them into a bold new genre. It’s also remarkable in that it manages to make a grim if fascinating true story into something so unforgettable, shattering and ultimately exhilarating. 

Set simultaneously in the tiny rural American town of Skidmore, Missouri where aggressive outsider Ken Rex McElroy terrorised residents for years, every legal conviction quashed by his showboating defence lawyer Richard Gene McFadin, and in the memory of David Baird, the prosecuting attorney recalling his part in what would turn out to be the final case against the vicious drifter. An entire community is magically, vividly conjured up – the feisty female barkeep, the local butcher and his kindly wife, the scrappy underage girl McElroy impregnates, various others who have been intimidated and abused – as Baird tells the tale of ordinary people who finally decided enough was enough. As with Cruise, Jack Holden plays all of the characters, changing from male to female, young to old, civilised to feral, with an adjustment in voice, stance or emphasis, in a breathtaking display of actorly craft. He’s mesmerising, powerful then tender, pathetic then terrifying, turning on a dime, his handsome features endlessly malleable, as he snarls, simpers, pleads or just looks on with impassive authority. The word “stunning” gets bandied about frequently with regards to acting, but Holden truly is: this is a stupendous performance.

The text, tense, white-hot and vivid, pulls few punches in describing the fear and brutality, shot through with unexpected shards of humour, all underscored and punctuated by Elliott’s thunderous, thrilling score. Tinged with C&W, emo rock and haunting bombast, Elliott’s music works mostly like a film soundtrack but occasionally explodes into full on numbers…it’s wonderful.

In fact, Stamboullouian’s production is packed with wonders. The originality of his staging astonishes: an array of spotlit microphones stands in for an entire community, their systematic unplugging taking on a sinister tone, a neon lit doorway spins and pivots to simulate movement and change of location, a pair of roving spotlights suggests an oncoming truck, the invention is the very stuff of theatre, and it’s executed with razor-sharp precision. Joshua Pharo’s acidic, transformative lighting and Sarah Golding’s galvanic movement direction are indispensable, as is Natasha Fields’s starkly effective set design. 

There are multiple stage pictures that linger long in the memory, but Giles Thomas’s sound design is equally essential to the overall success of the show. At times it’s like listening to a rock concert, at others a radio phone-in…or a seance. Whispers and shouts from a vengeful mob come from behind you, Holden barks, bellows and murmurs into hand held mics. It’s incredibly complex but thoroughly clear.

This is theatrical storytelling at its most dynamic and compulsive, edge-of-your-seat stuff that plays out with a cinematic fluidity and the intensity of a thriller. Holden must be on the brink of major stardom, but this tour de force turn will surely go down as a career highlight. Don’t even think about missing it. Kenrex rocks.