That young person sitting next to you on the bus, earbuds iwedged n, an enigmatic, Mona Lisaish smile on their face - are they listening to a podcast?
I can’t be too precious about it, numbering Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon books amongst my favourites about showbiz and sneaking a peek, as a very guilty pleasure, at Wikipedia’s accounts of spree killings from time to time. But there’s plenty of upmarket stuff too, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Terrence Malick’s Badlands for example, if you want that guilt dialled back a little.
And now KENREX, back for a third run and pushing out any tinsel-tinged guaranteed ticket seller in a West End venue. Jack Holden (pictured below) and Ed Stambollouian’s hit has gathered strong word of mouth and rave reviews, tapping into a fanbase comprising both those looking for the delicious taste of transgressive thrills but also audiences keen to see what theatre can do in the hands of a supremely adept actor with confidence to burn and a buddy who understands the impact music can make on a story.
It starts innocuously enough, after a panicky telephone call framing device. Holden takes his time to describe the Missouri town of Skidmore, terrorised in the 70s by its bogeyman tormentor. The telling reminded me of Kenneth Williams’ or Rik Mayall’s celebrated turns on Jackanory, full of vivid characterisation, energy and humour. The script reminded of Stephen King’s familiar conjuring of smalltown America with an economy of words skilfully painting pictures of a dilapidated mainstreet, with church, guns and pick-up trucks defining the culture.
We know something wicked this way is coming and, transformed by a hunched gait and a twisted visage, Holden brings it in the form of the eponymous Ken Rex McElroy, a sociopathic outsider who has long terrorised the townsfolk but whose neuroses are curdling into full psychoses, unchecked by mental health services nor law enforcement (this is the early 80s).
Soon Holden is showing his astonishing virtuosity in switching to a lawyer who sits somewhere between Lionel Hutz and Rumpole, Richard McFadin lending his unscrupulous smarts to McElroy’s thuggish intimidation to keep his client out of jail. We laugh at the attorney’s oily cynicism but can’t help thinking that the American legal system was as biddable then as it is now for those with the power to abuse it. You sense a shodown coming and it sure does - you betcha bottom dollar it does.
The evening takes us on an extraordinary helter-skelter ride into madness, individual and collective, led by Holden’s domination of the space, a shapeshifter who is every bit a teenage bride one moment as he is a bemused FBI man the next. Just moving the props around and not tripping over the leads would tax many an actor, but Holden appears to be in two or three places at once, playing two or three parts simultaneously, for two gruelling hours. You’re slightly surprised that there is only one of him to take a bow at the curtain.
That is not to downplay the work of John Patrick Elliott, a banjo in hand for a country hoedown one minute and an electric guitar the next for a blast of thrash metal, as the music manipulates our mood. With the look of a young James Taylor, he also Americanises the scene for what is, after all, a very American story. There’s super sound design work too from Giles Thomas, taking us into the dust, dirt and despair of the left-behind Midwest, Missouri voting (of course) overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
If the play sidesteps (just) the cliché of a Butch and Sundance ending, some of the air does go out of the balloon after the interval as shit gets very real indeed. Questions about the true purpose of a legal system and whether ends can ever justify means are dealt with, at best, sketchily, but that detracts little from a coruscating example of theatrical conception and execution.
Execution being the mot juste, y’all.
KENREX at The Other Palace until 1 February
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