David Baird recalls his father telling him, “Nothing ever happens in Skidmore,” a small town in northwest Missouri, when he was offered the job of Nodaway County prosecutor. But neither are familiar with Ken Rex McElroy, a local cattle rustler, thief, arsonist, and bully. KENREX, the Olivier Award-winning “true crime thriller” now playing Off-Broadway, lives up to its name.
Jack Holden embodies every character in town in a magnetic performance that reminds us why we go to the theater in the first place. Co-written by Holden and Ed Stambollouian, KENREX also features a pulsating, Americana-infused score by John Patrick Elliott, performed live and in sync with Giles Thomas’s atmospheric sound effects. The result? An edge-of-your-seat journey into the depths of small-town America, a broken judicial system, and the vigilante residents determined to reclaim their power.
The bully nobody could stop. Until they did
Holden premiered KENREX in the UK in 2024. Its arrival in New York City follows similarly triumphant solo-driven shows, including Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Sean Hayes in The Unknown. While the former employed multiple live video feeds and the latter a comforting name recognition from 11 seasons on Will & Grace, Holden comes to the U.S. cold and makes a white-hot impression.
Under Stambollouian’s direction, with crisp, precise movement by Sarah Golding, Holden lures the audience into McElroy’s psyche one eerie chapter at a time. Lighting and video designer Joshua Pharo packages each chapter with headline typography, such as “TOWN,” “THE GIRL,” and “THE KILLER.”
Aspects of KENREX’s origin story can be found in classic American plays and literature, like Our Town and Spoon River Anthology, or even musical theater roots, such as the brooding ranch hand Jud Fry in Oklahoma! But the real-life 1981 murder in front of dozens of witnesses at the story’s core stands on its own two feet.
“What does justice look like?” asks an FBI agent tasked with assessing both victim and criminal. The answer isn’t as cut and dry as you may think, making KENREX a play as mesmerizing after the fact as when you’re watching it.
It wants better content.
Is ‘KENREX’ worth seeing?
In KENREX, the real crime isn’t the murder—it’s every system that made it inevitable, and Jack Holden makes you feel the weight of all of it.
- Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, New York City
- Notable performer: Jack Holden
- Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes with one intermission
- Performances through June 27, 2026
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