Here’s Mickey Joe Theatre Review: KenRex, a one-person musical, based on Ken Rex McElroy, who was killed in Skidmore in 1981. This review is for the London production. It opened in New York in April 2026.
Including the YouTube-generated transcript so it shows up in searches.
Transcript
Chapter 1: Introduction
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I could sit here for the next hour or so and intellectualize about why this piece of theater works as well as it does. I could tell you how compelling it is as a
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7 seconds
piece of storytelling, which many other pieces of theater are. I could tell you about this powerhouse central performance from Jack Holden, the likes of
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14 seconds
of which we have seen on other stages already this year. What I will say about this is that I haven’t said much about a lot of
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21 seconds
Other shows are that, honestly, it’s really cool in a way that not a lot of theater is. A lot of stuff is impressive, remarkable, and engaging.
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31 seconds
Not a lot is this cool. Oh my god. Hey,
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34 seconds
Welcome back to my theater-themed YouTube channel, or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Joe, and I’m obsessed with all things theater as a
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43 seconds
theater critic and content creator here on social media. I am currently in the midst of 12 days of seeing shows every single day before I take a little
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A bit of a festive break. We are also in a busy season for openings because that’s just what the shows are trying to do as well. Not that they’ll be taking a
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festive break, but they all want to have their official opening night before the Christmas period. And so critics around the country are seeing by and large a
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1 minute, 7 seconds
A lot of like pantomimes, specifically Christmas shows, or a lot of sort of festive family programming, things that
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1 minute, 14 seconds
They are magical and enchanting and joyous and wintry. And Kenrix, currently playing at the Other Palace Theater in
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London is just about none of those things. You know, you’ve got Christmas countercultural programming. And then you’ve got Kenrex, which is this
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1 minute, 29 seconds
explosive multi-rolling true crime performance on stage, which is sort of nothing as I’ve ever seen before.
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1 minute, 37 seconds
There is some familiarity with solo shows like Baby Reindeer. This is more like what you get if you handed Baby Reindeer a shotgun, or I guess maybe shot
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Baby Reindeer with that shotgun. It’s a creative collaboration from writer and performer Jack Holden. And when you get
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work like this, and the lines between writing and performance and direction begin to blur, it feels less like those
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kind of titles. And we’ll talk about who did all of those roles. Uh, but it starts to feel more like the word “theater maker” becomes appropriate here.
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And that’s always how I’ve thought of Jack Holden, who has been an actor in other people’s plays and who has written plays with other people acting in them,
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But who has, on a couple of occasions now, delivered these new innovative solo shows? And I say solo show with an
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asterisk because he’s not the only performer on stage, but he is in both instances thus far, taking charge of the dialogue and the narrative and portraying all of these different
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characters. The first was Cruz, a real gift to audiences as we were emerging from the pandemic-era theatrical shutdown. And the follow-up
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It is the tonally completely different Kenrix, which had a little off-West End run at the Shaftesbury Playhouse. It’s now playing at a slightly larger venue, The
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Other Palace, before what I imagine will be a very exciting future. We’re going to talk all about this play today. I will tell you what it
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is about. I will tell you how it works on stage, and I hope to articulate why it is so good. Of course,
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If you have had the chance to see it already, you can help me out in the comments section below. Please share all of your thoughts about Kenrix.
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In the meantime, here are mine. If you like listening, make sure to subscribe,
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Follow me on podcast platforms and do whatever you have to do so you don’t miss any of my many upcoming reviews.
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Oh, there are so many. For now, just like they do in the play, let’s talk about Kenrix.
Chapter 2: synopsis/overview
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3 minutes, 26 seconds
[music]
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3 minutes, 27 seconds
So when you walk into the auditorium of the other palace theater, this single-tier, raked, uh, semi-intimate playing space, what you see by way of the
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The playing space is a thrust stage painted entirely green, upon which are several props and a couple of set pieces. The
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The whole thing is very rich with theatrical possibilities. We are going to do some honest-to-God storytelling here by way of a desk with music equipment on
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it by way of several microphones on stands, by way of some like a perspect drum screens around a chair, by way of a
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4 minutes
A step unit on casters that can be moved around, a screen, and various other devices that performer Jack Holden is using
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going to use to grip us tightly for the next couple of hours. Jack is joined on stage by another performer, John Patrick
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Elliot, who is performing music of his own composition in the back corner of the playing space. Occasionally, it contributes to this cinematic
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vibe, and it just underscores this is very much still a play rather than anything resembling a musical. On other occasions, the music becomes more explicitly required in the narrative.
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Jack Holden plays one character who sings a song. He plays another character who has a theme song, which is about as
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cartoonish as it sounds and might seem a little out of place in what I have been describing to you as a very Netflix documentary, familiar true crime
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thriller. And it is, tonally, exactly what it is. But it’s also a theatrical evolution of that sort
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What struck me was that it felt like Making a Murderer meets The Simpsons. If you remember nothing else I say from this review, remember that because once I
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realized it on my second visit to the show last week, having seen it previously at Southern Playhouse, uh, I couldn’t shake that idea that that was
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The tonal convergence of this, where it feels like an episode of The Simpsons, where everyone’s just having a really intensely bad day. And the whole thing
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is contextualized within the framing of a recorded interview with a member of law enforcement played by Jack Holden as
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It is the interviewer who flashes back to a panicked phone call that a wife is making about her husband, who has been shot. This is the jumping-off point
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for an explosive story about Kenrix, who, in the materialization, is a man. His name was Kenrix Mroy. As I said, this is true
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crime. This actually happened. Kenrix’s story has previously been adapted into a book, which I think was later adapted into a TV movie. It has been referenced in
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popular culture, and now it is told through this gripping stage play co-written by Jack Holden and Ed Stambbleyan, who is also the director.
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6 minutes
And eventually, the time comes for Jack to portray Kenrix, which he does with this fascinating physicality. We could
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talk extensively about all of the details of these different characterizations that he brings to life on this stage. And the cartoonish quality of it is, I think, important.
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Not only because it would be relentlessly and intensely miserable if there weren’t some sense of levity,
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which we’re only going to find through a little bit of color in these portrayals,
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but also because it helps us, as do the characterizations and the physicality,
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to get a sense of who it is we’re talking about here. There’s a passage of this where we’ve just become so inundated with the names of different
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locals and townspeople, uh, after which we don’t really meet anybody new except for one important character. We also I
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Guess, come to find out later on that something of a theatrical trick has been perpetrated here by introducing all of these characters in such a light-hearted
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and cartoonish way as we meet, uh, the slightly silly mayor and the vicar. And it’s at this point that I’m thinking
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about the Simpsons, right? But with Kenrex, it’s entirely different. And we learn through the sound, through the lighting, and through Jack’s physicality
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that this is a sinister, malicious presence at the very beginning, even before he tells us about Kendrick’s
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reputation, why he has become the town bully, and his dubious past and criminal activity. He lowers his
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shoulder to one side and brings the other one up closer to his head. It’s this sort of Richard III meets Mr.
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Hyde has a kind of posture. This asymmetric hunch is completed with a very bassy draw, and this pained grimace is entirely in contrast to that of a vivacious radio DJ.
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the squeaky-voiced pastor and the gossipy store worker whom we’ve just met.
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Now, by this point, we’ve been introduced through Jack’s performance not only to all of the different townspeople but also to where this is taking place, the
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town of Skidmore, with this really vivid picture of its establishment through the narration. We’re told that this is a town where locals recognize each other
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from a distance by the way that they drive their pickup trucks, and crucially, that it is remote enough and small enough that it takes any real police
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presence more than an hour to arrive from the neighboring town of St. Joseph.
Chapter 3: Creative Collaboration
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8 minutes, 18 seconds
[music]
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The essential focus of the material here is this verbal storytelling. And if you were to sit across a table from Jack
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Holden, as he less theatrically told you this story, it would still be, I’m sure,
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utterly captivating. But it is elevated far beyond that. Not just through his transformative chameleonic performance,
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but also through the astounding creative collaboration happening in the space. This musical wizardry is being curated at all times. You
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Never see John Patrick Elliot stop moving in the same way that Jack Holden doesn’t. It’s an indispensable performance from each of them. And it’s a very innovative but also very
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A fast-paced and demanding show, when it comes to technical elements. Giles Thomas sound design has a couple of
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great surround-sound moments that contribute to the overall sense of intimidation found throughout the thing. Just steadily we
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We are getting more and more unsettled as we find ourselves feeling increasingly situated in the town among these increasingly desperate people. Desperate
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because though he has been the town bully for some time, Kenrik’s behavior begins to worsen after the inciting event, which is his attendance
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of the pumpkin show. Pumpkin, not pumpkin. That’s apparently very important, where he is entranced by the performance of the Star Spangled Banner
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by a local high school student named Trina Mloud. The brilliance of the one-person performance of it all is that the Star Spangled Banner is sung a
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top an elevated part of the set by Jack Holden against a backdrop of video design with his live vocal, eventually
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ending as the song continues to ring out, so he can descend the stairs and then go and watch the silhouette of him that is
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10 minutes
left as an uncomfortable shadow in the playing space, as Kenrix again adjusted his posture, showing us what we by this point have learned to recognize as his
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silhouette watching Trina and just staring at her. Moments later, we learn that Trina is, I think, 14 years old.
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And though the people of the town offer deliberately little resistance when Ken begins grooming her because they think that this may please him, in fact, it only makes the situation worse. He
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becomes more volatile towards the other locals, including Trina’s family, as well as anyone else who is good-natured enough to want to try and help her
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situation, because what he now has is an additional weakness and a vulnerability.
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Joshua Dazaro is the designer of the lighting and video elements I began to speak about there, and lighting and sound are both used so extraordinarily throughout this production.
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There are a bunch of handheld microphones used for voice editing effects. We hear different sounds
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effects on those, but also they’re just used to represent different things. At one moment, Jack Holden is arresting himself at the end of a handheld
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microphone. At another, these microphone stands become a crowd of people that you know, try as he might, he can’t actually
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render himself on stage. So we see the scale of them, we see the judgment of
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them, as represented by inward-facing microphones on microphone stands. That’s an aspect of Ed Stambolan’s brilliant direction that keeps Jack flying around
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the playing space. And what you have to assume at this point is remarkable muscle memory because it’s so smooth that he transitions between each
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character that he is portraying. And he’s like box stepping and square dancing around set pieces as he’s moving them between lines of dialogue, as we’re
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going in and out of music. One of the most overtly theatrical characters that he portrays in a real demonstration of showmanship is Kenrix’s scheming lawyer,
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Richard McFadden, whose skill at poking at a small perforation of technicality until it becomes a gaping, damaging hole in the case of the prosecution, is
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partnered well with Kenri’s campaign of intimidation and bullying against anyone who plans to testify against him. That is the explanation that we are given
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for how he has been able to commit so many crimes with so few convictions.
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With Richard McFadden’s playful theme song punctuated by whip sound effects,
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It’s truly a total all-you-can-eat buffet, as this show. At one point, we’re trying to clap responses back to percussive rhythms in a barn dance. At
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Another, we are silently stunned as Jack Holden manages to perpetrate an incredibly tense confrontation with himself. I’ve seen so many plays and
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Recently, those who haven’t been able to create a legitimate sense of tension or who have had to cheat. This calls itself a thriller, and it deserves to
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wholeheartedly because it is blood-pumping intensity established by a single
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The performer is threatening himself, having a standoff with himself. And the fact that I am sitting there as a grown adult looking
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at this man and feeling terrified that you know, I’m like, I don’t want him to shoot himself in this standoff that he’s having with himself, or later on, like
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questioning the great moral dilemma that eventually emerges, whether I agree with his perspective on whether he was
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right to kill himself, or whether I feel sad for the version of him that is mourning the version of him that he was a minute ago. Like it’s mad.
Chapter 4: highlight moments
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[music]
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And there are triumphant moments that are still and pared back and sort of uncomfortably silent in contrast. There
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It is a scene set in a bar where the wrong thing is said, and someone is threatened. And this scene
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It is comic and gets big laughs all the way until it doesn’t. And I love writing like that, where it’s clear what’s going on
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to happen, and it’s still funny until it’s not, and you feel this quality of the air slowly disappearing out of the room. Then you have sequences like the
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end of act one, this arrest via a wired handheld microphone that I told you about. Uh, and while that’s taking
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place, smoke is filling the stage. Blue lighting is flashing. We are hearing power cords on an electric guitar. It’s intense. It’s heavy metal theater. And
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As I said, it’s just cool in the way that so few shows are objectively cool.
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I normally save my recommendations until the very end of these reviews, but this because it’s like that, because it has that kind of a quality, is a great
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theater show to take people who don’t think they like theater whatsoever, and see if you like those kinds of Netflix documentaries. Obviously, if you
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love true crime, but if you like anything that is that gripping and engaging, this is everything that maybe you don’t think theater normally is, but I urge you to go and find out.
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Now, as we head into the second act, I think that’s actually when the direction gets even stronger, and you have to pull out a few more tricks. What I loved
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14 minutes, 46 seconds
About Cruz, what I love about this is the variety in staging. I’ve seen and witnessed a lot of great pieces of theatrical storytelling when the
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Writing is so good, and the performance is so good that someone can sit there. But I guess something like Flea Bag when it was on stage was a little more akin to that. But I also love when
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A performer has a playground like this, allowing them to offer us versatility in storytelling. And we go
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back to a place of comedy as a trial is taking place, and because Jack is having to play defense, the prosecution is like
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racing up and down steps, and like waiting for his own response, realizing he’s not there to give it, running back down, gets a big laugh. But then these
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moments of blinding, blistering tension when there’s this one setpiece, which is just a door frame with like lighting
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strips on it, which he lowers down onto its side to have himself framed by the lighting in a more uncomfortable
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intense state. And all of these microphones and all of these cables on all of these stands are becoming a big part of the visual identity of the piece as
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well. And in the first act, they’ve already meant so much. One microphone is the phone into which a terrified 911 caller places a call. Another is the actual
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15 minutes, 54 seconds
A microphone with which Trina sings the Star Spangled Banner. Another is the voice of the local radio DJ talking
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about the events of the town and the consciousness of the people of the town as it develops. But where these are more literal interpretations of things that
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are sung or spoken into or on other occasions, uh, just ways of making Jack’s voice sound more immediate and intense
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So we can hear the whispering quality of it in this sort of goosebump-inducing way. As I said, as we go into the second act, the microphone stands
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themselves come to represent the scale of characters in a moment of the story that really necessitates that
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It would be very hard to depict otherwise in a solo version. Now, having done my best to avoid major spoilers for the production thus far, there will be
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Spoilers about the ending and what happens. It’s an old, uh, perhaps even famous true crime case, so that you may know
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Already, the details of why it’s novel to begin with. If you don’t want to know,
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Then skip right ahead to the final section of this review.
Chapter 5: Shortcomings
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But it is a really thrilling ending and one which goes some of the way towards mitigating the biggest question I have
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always had about this piece, which is why now? What is the relevance of it? What is it saying to us right now other than,
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You know, these creative collaborators finding out about it and wanting to tell this story in a way that is cool, pulse-raising, and engaging? And theater can be all of those things. But Cruz,
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When Jack performed that, coming out of the closures of the pandemic, was also prescient and current in a way that sort of
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of made it feel inescapably topical and relatable. And this, I think, could stick the landing with just the slightest degree more clarity when it
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comes to delivering a message about community and consciousness. Because what we’re building towards here is this
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Mob Justice style finale, this Murder on the Orient Expressesque ending, in which the true crime to be solved, as we learned at the end of the first act, is
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not one that Kenrix has perpetrated, although he does a lot of crimeing. It has been brought against him. He has been
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murdered in a fashion familiar to Bonnie and Clyde in the front seat of his pickup truck. Shot multiple times with
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allegedly dozens of witnesses, as he is surrounded by people of the town who have lost faith in the legal process
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being able to put him away and keep them safe, and who have taken it upon themselves to find justice, or who have
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perverted the course of justice. It’s very open to interpretation whether they did the right thing.
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The right thing in the truest sense, the right thing for themselves, for Trina,
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His morning wife, even, who does not see it that way. And that I also think gives it an awful lot of theatrical license,
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This murder on the Orient Express, uh, kind of a conclusion. But I do still wonder if, beyond everything, it’s already achieving in terms of just gripping,
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dynamic storytelling and entertainment, and transporting and transfixing us,
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whether it could also leave us with something really impactful and meaningful about society and the way
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that we move through society, and the way that people come together in the face of
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challenges like this. Because the really fascinating upshot of the whole thing, and perhaps the most intriguing angle of the entire case, is that the murder
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officially remains unsolved, and that none of the town’s people have admitted to witnessing this, despite their
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allegedly being a crowd of uh like 50 or 60. This is a piece of information that we are told in the end, in the context of
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The conclusion of the story for a couple of individual characters. We perhaps lose the sense of the town and of
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community in the final reflection. And I think there’s so much there of real interest that could perhaps be explored
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just the tiniest bit more. At the same time, I love that their committed silence takes hold in the play, and we
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Don’t hear from those characters thereafter, and we see the microphones unplugged at these stands to represent that. That is also a great ending to a really great piece of theater.
Chapter 6: Conclusion
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20 minutes, 11 seconds
So, that has been my review of Kenrix at the Other Palace Theater. Shows like this don’t come around all that often.
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This is unique, exciting, engaging, and compelling. It is a true crime
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thriller on stage. It is legitimately intimidating. It is full of character.
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It is some of the most impressive creative work you are going to see happening in front of you in real time.
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It’s a great way to really delight in a thriving creative collaboration. But beyond how pretentious I make this sound, as I said at the start, it is
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just so cool. It is cool, in a way, the theater often doesn’t know how to be. A lot of theater is smart and
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A lot of theater is affecting, but this is cool and exciting. It will make your heart beat faster. It will make the
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hairs on your arms stand up. Take people to go and see this who don’t think they like theater and convert them for life
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Because of this, and I have truly run out of any other adjectives, it is just cool.
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Go and check it out for yourselves at the Palace Theater in London if you haven’t already. I would love to know what you thought. Let us know in the comments section down below. And in the meantime,
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If you enjoyed listening to my review and you would like to hear more of them about other shows in the West End and on Broadway, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube or follow me on
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podcast platforms. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagy day for 10
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[singing]
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seconds. [music] I’m Mickey Joe Theater. Oh my god. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagy day.
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