The British actor Jack Holden is a good-looking guy with a profound ordinariness about him: a kind and expressive face, the barest hint of a paunch, and light brown hair combed up to suggest a grown-up Tintin in his mid-30s. Holden exploits his Everyman qualities in his tour-de-force solo show Kenrex, a riveting thriller that arrives in New York after an Olivier-winning run in London. Working with director and co-writer Ed Stambollouian, Holden has fashioned a kind of live version of a true-crime podcast in which he serve as both narrator and the voice of the dozens of people who were both victims and witnesses to a series of crimes in and around rural Skidmore, Missouri, in the early 1980s.
The case concerns Ken Rex McElroy, the son of poor migrant farmers in Kansas and the Ozarks who settled in Skidmore in his youth and earned a reputation for petty theft, arson, intimidation, and cattle rustling before graduating to attempted murder and more serious offenses. He also managed to avoid prison despite a whopping 21 indictments — thanks in part to the skills of his shady defense attorney. Another key factor, Holden shares, is the fact that Kenrex was a bully whose cowering neighbors rightly feared retaliation if they agreed to testify against him — or even call the local sheriff who was a full hour’s drive away.
Holden frames the story around the county prosecutor, newly arrived from Kansas City and eager to do right by the townsfolk despite the slow pace and bureaucratic limits of the justice system. But he also introduces us to the major players, from the local preacher to the tavern owner to the glad-handing mayor, bringing each to live with a different pitch of his supple voice and subtle twist of his body. (He’s mastered the flat Midwestern cadences of that part of the country.) Over time, we come to recognize the reappearance of Kenrex even before he speaks in his gravelly low voice, by the Igor-like hunch of his shoulders. The same goes for Kenrex’s teenage bride, whom he wed in a sympathetic nearby county to avoid a statutory rape charge — we register her presence by the way Holden suddenly stands with a hip jutting out like an annoyed adolescent.
It’s a remarkable performance, goosed by Giles Thomas’s 360-degree sound design, Joshua Pharo’s lighting, and Anisha Fields’s versatile costume and sets — including a prominent reel-to-reel tape recorder that allows Holden to engage in real-time conversations with prerecorded versions of himself (and a handful of others). He’s also backed by the glaring guitar riffs and banjo-inflected country score of onstage musician John Patrick Elliott, which literally underscore the atmosphere of a place that seems both familiar and remote.
Yes, Holden does take some liberties with the real story. There’s a tidiness to his presentation, in neat chapters whose titles are projected onto a blank billboard at the back of the stage, that doesn’t always line up with the messy facts of the case. Timelines are compressed, details fudged. No matter. He gets the gist of the situation right. And it all builds to a memorable showdown with a dozen or so mic stands around the stage as the frazzled residents of Skidmore circle their longtime tormentor — with Holden rushing around to give voice to all of the characters in rapid succession.
Kenrex is brave and bravura work, a showcase for Holden’s virtuosity as both a writer and performer. In the epilogue near the end of the show, Holden also manages to challenge his audience to think deeper about why we’re drawn to true-crime stories in the first place. Even when the mystery appears to have been solved, wrapped up with tied-in-a-bow neatness, there are repercussions and emotional fallout that will endure long after. Every action, no matter how noble, has consequences. Every voice has the potential to echo in the darkness, to insinuate itself into our consciousness long after it goes silent. ★★★★★
KENREX
Lucille Lortel Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through June 27 for $89 to $169