True Crime Thriller ‘Kenrex’ Engagingly Revisits a 1981 Missouri Murder

The tale of Kenneth Rex McElroy seems ready-made for a true crime podcast. A resident of the small town of Skidmore, Missouri, McElroy terrorized his neighbors for years, his alleged crimes ranging from cattle rustling and burglary to assault, arson, statutory rape, and animal cruelty.When he was finally convicted, after 20 indictments, after shooting the local grocer, McElroy managed to secure bond and proceeded to intimidate and threaten the townspeople until one day in the summer of 1981, when a bunch of them apparently surrounded him and his much younger wife in their pickup truck and shot him dead. Although bullets from more than one gun were involved, no one would identify a perpetrator, and 45 years later, no one has been charged in the shooting.McElroy’s story has, in fact, drawn the interest of numerous podcasters and has also been documented in books and on television. Now it has inspired a play, “Kenrex,” written by British actor Jack Holden and director and playwright Ed Stambollouian, and essentially performed by Mr. Holden, who juggles a multitude of characters, including the titular bad guy, under Mr. Stambollouian’s guidance.In the new off-Broadway production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Mr. Holden is joined onstage — as he was in London, where “Kenrex” collected rave reviews and several Olivier Award nominations — by musician and singer John Patrick Elliott, who has composed a series of guitar-driven tunes drenched in Americana. The louder ones, and some are quite loud, lean towards Southern rock; you can imagine old Ken, whose hard-luck back story is revealed in detail, blasting them from that truck as he barrels towards the bar or another victim’s house.Mr. Elliott plays and sings periodically as Mr. Holden bustles across the small stage, conjuring characters ranging from a mayor and a preacher to a female barkeeper and a housewife. These are all, to put it generously, simple people; like “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” another British import, “Kenrex” unabashedly mocks Americans of a certain socio-economic background, and there can be a condescending, smart-alecky quality in some of his impersonations.While many critics across the pond were impressed, moreover, by what they described as Mr. Holden’s shape-shifting abilities, his mannered transitions and the manic movement that accompanies them — Anisha Fields’s minimal set includes a door frame and a stepladder, and the actor spends a good deal of time pushing or frolicking around them — can bring to mind an eager drama student at times. His vocal range is impressive enough, though hardly startling, and his Ken doesn’t so much speak as grunt and growl; the character’s favorite word is “Mm-hmm,” muttered real low and slow.Mr. Elliott fares best when he’s playing David Baird, the Kansas City-bred prosecuting attorney who tries to make Ken accountable before matters get out of hand. At various points, an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder becomes prominent onstage, and we hear the voice of a female federal agent interrogating David; the subject of the inquiry, a mystery at first, is gradually revealed over the play’s two acts.Towards the end, the agent asks David how he would have reacted to Ken if he were one of the citizens of Skidmore. “If he stole your animals…? Or your truck…? Or your daughter? If he bullied you? Shot at you? Nearly killed you? What if he did all that for ten years without repercussions?” When David responds that he believes in justice, she counters, “You don’t think they found justice?”It’s a fascinating and extremely topical question, challenging us to define social and criminal justice at a time when both are hot-button issues, and despite its shortcomings, “Kenrex” offers a vivid and engaging study of the subject.

True Crime Thriller ‘Kenrex’ Engagingly Revisits a 1981 Missouri Murder

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