Review: Kenrex, a Remarkable Tale of Vigilante Justice in America

True crime dramas regularly top the podcast charts thanks to the millions of listeners eager to train their ears on the abyss of human depravity, comforted by the knowledge that their lives could be a lot worse. A robust specimen of the genre has now landed off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian’s Kenrex arrives from the UK with a gale-force wind of acclaim at its back, having debuted with Sheffield Theatre in 2024 and transferred to London’s Southwark Playhouse and the Other Palace. It won two Olivier Awards earlier this month, for Holden as an actor and, appropriately, for sound design.

Perhaps in a nod to the mesmerizing power of the genre, Kenrex opens with a recorded conversation played back on a reel-to-reel. Federal agent Annette Parker (voiced by Kelly Burke) interviews David Baird (voiced by James Sobol Kelly) about a troubling case in Nodaway County, Missouri, where Baird serves as prosecutor. Holden and John Patrick Elliott (who composed the original music and performs it live) stand back and listen until Holden begins to speak Baird’s exact lines, taking over the part from there.

He introduces us to the townspeople of Skidmore, including Ken Rex McElroy, a tough guy who has been indicted multiple times but never convicted. Much of that has to do with his slippery attorney Richard McFadin, who always finds a way to get him off the hook. But it also derives from the fear McElroy instills in the locals, who rarely show up to court to testify against him. They just don’t trust that, in this town with no police, anyone would protect them when Ken Rex exacts his revenge. But when McElroy nearly kills a beloved local butcher and his court dates keep getting postponed, they decide enough is enough and take matters into their own hands.

This is a true story, and while the tale of a tightknit community eking out justice by completely subverting the justice system is not unprecedented onstage (To Kill a Mockingbird and Oklahoma! come to mind), Holden and Stambollouian have excellent timing, meeting this moment of dangerously low trust in government and institutions with breathtaking theatrical force.

Stambollouian (who also directs) delivers a non-stop spectacle with just two performers and minimal scenery. A rolling metal staircase is the most valuable part of Anisha Fields’s set, while the costume she has chosen for Holden is a standard-issue suit for an underpaid county prosecutor. And yet the show often resembles a Cirque du Soleil extravaganza complete with fog and dramatic lighting from Joshua Pharo, who saturates the stage in sickly green and incendiary orange. Sound designer Giles Thomas enhances the action with effects, subtly manipulating Holden’s voice as he speaks into the multiple microphones placed around the stage.

Holden slips in and out of 35 characters, all completely distinct and instantly recognizable, in this sweaty tour-de-force. A fussy anxious tenor means he’s playing the pastor. A squeaky gotcha question spoken through a toothy smile and he’s McFadin (one gets the sense of a vibrant party in the Skidmore closet). A slow drawl and a crooked posture, and he’s Ken Rex himself, the self-appointed king of a town allegedly under the jurisdiction of the state of Missouri—but the people know better.

Elliott’s hellraising, pulse-quickening original music completes the spell, pulling us deeper into the world of Skidmore. An electrifying live performer with a banshee howl, this one-man band performs rollicking country songs that would make me turn up the radio, perhaps while speeding down a lonely highway in a dusty pickup truck.

Ken Rex is a genuine thriller, but its real power derives from the suspicion we bring into the theater that somewhere in America something like this is happening right now, and on a grander scale. Major criminals sleep easy knowing that they can game the justice system with a clever lawyer and the right connections. So, what is a regular citizen to do? The people of Skidmore have an answer, not that they’re saying much. Still, it’s so nice to see British theatermakers discover an appreciation for the second amendment.