Ken Rex, a true crime play by Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian, tells the story of a brutal bully who was shot and killed publicly in Skidmore, Missouri. No one was ever convicted of the crime, though at least thirty people witnessed Ken Rex McElroy’s death, including his teenage wife, Trena. Holden who takes on 36 personas (voice, stance, stature) masterfully portrays townspeople, the prosecutor, Ken Rex, and his wife, a daunting task helped by director Ed Stambollouian’s excellent staging.

The dynamic production is enhanced by the superb original live Americana score composed and performed by John Patrick Elliott (The Little Unsaid). Elliott’s musical and song performance inform Holden’s portrayals and stir tension and foreboding. Tim Creavin and Alex Crossland help with the performances. Combined with the lighting and video design by Joshua Pharo and Giles Thomas’s expert sound design, the production is an atmospheric thrill ride. Kenrex runs through June 27 at the Lucille Lortel Theater.

Ken Rex McElroy’s infamous cold case has been featured in documentaries and a TV movie. In fact it has produced a cottage industry of works about the subject and the case, which are definitively explored in the best-selling book by Harry N. MacLean, In Broad Daylight. The works have been spawned from the tragic results that took place in Nodaway County Missouri that cannot be put to rest because the townspeople and now their children and grandchildren do not want to resurrect the terror that McElroy perpetrated on the town for a decade. For them McElroy’s vigilante justice killing in 1981 stopped the hell and abuse of townsfolk by a miserable criminal who committed rape, theft, property damage, intimidation and attempted murder and assault. He was also a pedophile who married his way out of being convicted of statutory rape by distraught parents.

The play which is told from the perspective of the prosecutor David Baird begins with him at the top of the play. Holden’s reasonable Baird is being deposed by Parker (an individual we never meet in Holden’s panoply of characters) for a reason we find out at the conclusion. As he answers Parker’s questions, eventually we learn about the story of the rural town of Skidmore through Baird’s exchanges with the townspeople and descriptions. Holden enacts the individuals so that we become familiar with the situation and the key people involved.

Holden and Stambollouian truncate the real story and refine many details to redeem the time and highlight the important, representative events. For example McElroy had 17 children with three different wives which the playwrights don’t include. For dramatic purposes they focus on Trena (the last wife) who he marries so she or her parents won’t press charges against him for statutory rape when she is pregnant. To shut up her disapproving parents and keep them in line, McElroy burns down their house and shoots their dog, we are told by Baird.

In chapter segments, Holden theatricalizes the events and unfolds by degrees McElroy’s expanding terrorism of the town so that he eventually establishes his own justice with no accountability to end his abuse and hatred of the town citizens. If they try to bring him to account, he gets revenge via intimidation, harassment and arson. He makes it a point for others to realize no one, but no one causes him trouble. If they do, they will suffer.

Holden inhabits McElroy’s “ethos” suggesting his stature, hulking presence, deep voice and his posture to effect the man’s heaviness and an injury he suffered which twisted his body and put him in chronic pain. Holden’s success with female portrayals adjusts so we know according to accents, postures, stance, speed, slowness or drawl whether its the no-nonsense Ida, or sweet grocery store owner Lois or Trena, his wife who turns into a female version of McElroy meanness and amorality. The playwrights’ dialogue also cues us into the individuals.

Perhaps the most acute and truly devastating portrayal that Holden effects is the glad-handing, smiling, confident Richard McFadin, McElroy’s defense attorney who makes sure McElroy walks free on every indictment. He is taken to court over twenty times. The playwrights exemplify how McFadin gets McElroy off. We note how the happy-go-lucky lawyer uses technicalities to get McElroy off and has no compunctions about his complicity in allowing criminal McElroy to dominate, control and run down the good will of the townspeople who are afraid of him with good cause. McElroy intimidates his witnesses and even intimidates the juries so that no one dares to accuse or act to defend themselves against his brutality and criminal behavior. Additionally, because the isolated town has no police department and the police who were an hour away didn’t want to deal with McElroy’s intimidation, townsfolk never call them.

McElroy’s reign of terror only worsens because the townspeople’s attempts to put him behind bars fail, with McFadn to the rescue. The tensions between McElroy, Trena and the townspeople escalate, especially after McElroy marries Trena and she becomes his ally. She provokes her “hero” whom “she loves” to take circumstances beyond his typical thefts, arson, harassment and more when Lois suggests she take care of her pregnancy and find out how many months she “is along.”

In response to the events that happen, McElroy with Trena as his mouthpiece affirm that they “run the town.” They are lawless. Their lawyer, an officer of the court with their tactics of intimidation and arson make sure the law doesn’t work. The townspeople take a page out of McElroy’s playbook and use it against him.

The production as seen from the perspective of someone from across the pond (Holden is English) is interesting. In addition to revealing the archetypal story of the “bully” and the “weakling” it is revelatory about an America rooted unfortunately in vigilantism where violence seems to prevail. The playwrights’ depiction of McFadin as a smiling, congenial Roy Cohen type who weaponizes the law against those the criminal harms to establish unequal justice is particularly frustrating. Holden’s performance of all the characters and the production make the townspeople’s silence understandable. In its simplicity, Ken Rex is a parable for our times. about a bully that must be stopped but no one person has the courage to stop him. However, when the town unites, McElroy doesn’t have a chance, not even against himself, because he ignores the best advice given to him.

The town has remained silent to this day.

Ken Rex runs 2 hours 15 minutes at the Lucille Lortel Theater though June 27, 2026. kenrextheplay.com.