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Kenrex, Southwark Playhouse, review and star rating: ★★★★
Here’s the thing: there are plenty of people who technically do what Jack Holden does, but scarce few who actually do what Jack Holden does. In Cruise, Holden’s homage to the people who were hit by the AIDS crisis, and new show Kenrex, he creates the scope of a show with an ensemble cast by using just one body.
One-man bands are ubiquitous across the fringe theatre circuit because they obviously keep costs low. This worked in Holden’s favour when in 2021 Cruise reopened the West End for the first time after the pandemic (it turned out it was far easier to social distance when there was no-one else on stage.)
Holden’s USP is elevating the one-man performance in basically every way you could possibly imagine, and in Kenrex, like in Cruise, the genius is you never wish there was anyone else on stage, he just manages to be everyone. In one scene he might be conveying the intensely fucked up inner mind of American criminal Ken Rex McElroy, but then in the next he’ll become a campy fourth-wall-breaking entertainer who has the audience clapping like seals. For the viewer it’s a disorientating but incredibly satisfying experience, a one-man physical endurance act.
Kenrex, Southwark Playhouse: at points it’s like watching Holden in the gym, working on a really trippy workout
To be fair, Holden isn’t a one-man band. John Patrick Elliott, with his angular moshing movements and wall of guitars and synths, provides the thrashing, ear-filling soundtrack. He’s a brilliant musician, sculpting sound as immersive and transportative as Holden’s performances.
Holden’s been working on Kenrex for seven years. It retells the true story of Ken Rex McElroy, the Missouri man charged with 21 offences including attempted murder but never prosecuted, basically due to systemic failings by the US police force. In the small town of Skidmore, where “everybody knows everybody’s business, but nobody requires anybody’s help,” the police are typically an hour away. By that point, Ken’s done a runner – and despite what they say, in reality the police don’t want to enter his house alone or confront him in the remote countryside when there’s the threat of violence. Most of the locals think he’s literally getting away with murder. This whole thing actually played out in the 1980s.
The way Holden contorts his body from carefree local to a man truly embodying some form of evil is physically astonishing, partly because his manifestations feel so believable
To paint a vivid picture of the place, Holden plays dozens of characters, including the best baker in the land, elementary school teachers, intense radio huns who are paid to be saccharinely cheery no matter their mood, lawyers and the young women who become victims of McElroy’s abuse. He drags props across the stage and uses lighting to take us from one character and scenario to the next. Holden and co-writer Ed Stambollouian’s writing zingily captures this gaggle of townsfolk with humour and pathos.
He’s a great vocal impersonator, but it’s the physicality – the way he contorts his body from carefree local to a man truly embodying some form of evil – that is the most impressive, partly because his manifestations feel so believable. That said, there’s a tad too much similarity between some of the characters, and perhaps a few too many characters overall; some of the bit-part women feel as if they’re sketched largely the same.
Co-writer and director Ed Stambollouian creates havoc with the small Southwark Borough stage space, giving Holden a two-hour nightly HIT workout as he rushes props (and himself) around, caked in sweat. At points it’s like watching Holden doing a particularly trippy workout.
There’s nothing wrong with Anisha Fields’s stripped-back set, but a bigger budget could help bring Skidmore more vividly to life with more detailed props and costumes. Some evocative scenescapes could have brought us even closer to Missouri through projections or set pieces, so I’m hoping the strong rumours of a West End transfer are true.
Kenrex plays at the Southwark Playhouse until 15 March
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