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Two-time 2026 Olivier Award-winning KENREX by Olivier Award winner Jack Holden and Olivier Award nominee Ed Stambollouian, is now playing off-Broadway. The show officially opened on April 26 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Read the reviews for KENREX below!
Performed by Holden and directed by Stambollouian, with an original score performed live by John Patrick Elliott, the limited 11-week run arrives in New York following three, acclaimed runs in London.
Direct from three sold-out runs across London – at the Southwark Playhouse Borough, Sheffield Theatre, and, most recently, The Other Palace – KENREX is the true-crime thriller about the thin line between justice served and justice taken.
Matthew Wexler, 1 Minute Critic: Jack Holden embodies every character in town in a magnetic performance that reminds us why we go to the theater in the first place. Co-written by Holden and Ed Stambollouian, KENREX also features a pulsating, Americana-infused score by John Patrick Elliott, performed live and in sync with Giles Thomas’s atmospheric sound effects. The result? An edge-of-your-seat journey into the depths of small-town America, a broken judicial system, and the vigilante residents determined to reclaim their power.
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: “KENREX” may not be as poor a fit for American audiences as previous UK efforts to put American dysfunction on stage (such as “Enron” and “Tammy Faye”), but Holden’s rocking performance does tend to put the spotlight more on him than the people of Skidmore.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: 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.
Jackson McHenry, Vulture: In that ending, the play adopts a shrugging sophistry about the vagaries of real justice that disappoints, especially with so much talent on display. If you’re going to excavate a story this horrific, make a claim, have a thesis, tell us more than just “you can get away with a lot in America.” “So… what?” Holden–as-Baird asks his supervisor. “What are we doing here?” I wanted to know the same.
Robert Hofler, The Wrap: As for Holden’s performance, it’s amazing he doesn’t collapse from exhaustion before “Kenrex” ends. I felt the same about Andrew Scott in “Vanya” and Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and if you found those one-person plays to be great theatrical experiences, “Kenrex” is the show for you. I found all three to be endurance contests for the actors, as well as a little gimmicky in the actors’ transitions from one character to the next.
Amelia Merrill, New York Theatre Guide: The most impactful aural moments, though, are the quieter ones from which whispers arise. In his top-notch, 360-degree sound design, Giles Thomas routinely employs recorded voices to stand in for unseen townspeople, responding and reacting to Holden’s characters from various sides of the theatre. You’d be forgiven if you thought those outcries were coming from your fellow audience members at first — I and my neighbors sure did. It’s but one way Kenrex involves us in the story and invites us to ask what we’d do in the Skidmore townspeople’s shoes.
Front Mezz Junkies, Ross: Jack Holden’s performance, which just won him and the show a number of Olivier Awards, sits at the electrifying centre, and it remains an astonishing feat of control, stamina, and transformation shaped by the precise sound design of Giles Thomas (IRT’s Disco Pigs) and the sharp lighting and video work created by Joshua Pharo (RSC’s Measure for Measure).
Average Rating:
78.6%
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