RENREX Review: A MONSTER MADE FLESH ON STAGE
JACK HOLDEN CHANNELS A TRUE-CRIME NIGHTMARE INTO A BLISTERING, UNFORGETTABLE ACT OF THEATRE!
★★★★★
꧁CURTAIN CALL CRITIQUES TOP PLAY OF 2025꧂
There are evenings in the theater when the walls seem to sweat, when the air thickens with dread and attention narrows to a single, unstoppable force onstage. Kenrex, the ferociously compelling new play by Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian, is one of those evenings. It doesn’t merely tell a story; it seizes you by the collar and refuses to let go until the final, haunted beat.
The subject is the notorious Ken Rex McElroy, the convicted criminal who terrorized the small town of Skidmore, Missouri—known infamously as the “town bully”—until the day he was shot dead, surrounded by witnesses who saw everything and, collectively, said nothing. The mystery of who killed him has endured for decades, a chilling testament to communal fear and moral exhaustion. Kenrex understands that this is not merely a whodunit; it is a portrait of a town pushed past its limits, and of a man whose capacity for violence bent reality around him.
At the center of it all is Jack Holden, delivering one of those performances that recalibrates what you think a solo actor can do. He plays twelve characters, including McElroy himself, with a virtuosity that borders on the supernatural. The shifts are lightning-fast yet deeply inhabited: a tilt of the head, a hardening of the jaw, a change in breath, and an entirely new person stands before you. Watching Holden work is like witnessing a controlled detonation—precision and chaos coexisting in terrifying harmony.
When Holden becomes Ken Rex, the temperature drops. These are the moments that feel genuinely dangerous. His McElroy is not a caricature of evil but something far worse: a man utterly convinced of his own invincibility. The rage, when it erupts, is shocking—not loud for its own sake, but volcanic, sudden, and profoundly frightening. More than once, I realized I was holding my breath. It felt, quite honestly, as if he had stepped outside the boundaries of normal human behavior, channeling something feral and unstoppable. Mortal terror is not a phrase critics should use lightly, but here it applies.
The production is heightened and enriched by John Patrick Elliott’s original live music, which acts as a kind of dark pulse beneath the action. The score is spare, ominous, and exquisitely attuned to the story’s moral shadows. It captures the claustrophobia of a town under siege and the slow, dreadful inevitability of violence. At times, the music seems to echo the collective heartbeat of Skidmore itself—anxious, watchful, and bracing for impact.
Holden and Stambollouian’s script is a marvel of economy and tension, balancing investigative rigor with visceral storytelling. It never sensationalizes the violence, yet it never looks away from it either. Instead, Kenrex poses the most challenging questions about justice, complicity, and what happens when the law fails so completely that ordinary people are left to make extraordinary—and irreversible—decisions.
By the final moments, the play leaves you shaken, contemplative, and oddly exhilarated. This is theatre that reminds you of its primal power: to terrify, to provoke, and to illuminate the darkest corners of human behavior. Kenrex is not just one of the most intense plays I have ever seen; it is one of the most accomplished.
KENREX - The Other Palace
Attended on 14 December 2025