Interview: 'We're Gonna Up The Ante To Eleven': John Patrick Elliott, Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian on The Return of KENREX

After successful runs in Sheffield and London, Kenrex is arriving at The Other Palace in December. The show, written by Jack Holden and Ed Stambollouian with music by John Patrick Elliott, tells the tale of Ken Rex McElroy, a criminal who faced the consequences of his actions at the hands of the townspeople of Skidmore, Missouri in 1981. Holden takes on all of the roles, with Elliott accompanying with live music on stage as well.

Recently, we had the chance to speak with Holden, Stambollouian and Elliott about the show and its return to London at The Other Palace Theatre. We discussed the creative process for Kenrex, what it is like to have only two people on stage portraying the entire town of Skidmore and how the show has been compared to a music gig!

How did each of you first get started in the world of theatre?

Ed: I did drama at university with John, actually, in Manchester! That's when we first met back in the day. We did a Drama and English degree at Manchester, did plays together and had a lot of fun. And then after I graduated, I went to train as a director at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, and that's where I met Jack, because Jack was on the acting course there. I immediately spotted him as someone I wanted to work with. We ended up doing a play together by Annie Baker called The Aliens, which Jack was in. I rang John, and I said, “I'd really like you to write music for this play,” because it was a play all about music and folk music, and set in rural Vermont. John wrote this beautiful soundtrack for it, and that was the beginning of the three of us all working together!

And what made you want to create a show about this true crime story?

Jack: Well, Ed and I were big true crime fans. We started early development on Kenrex about the time that S-Town came out, which was a huge podcast here. It was the epitome of this true crime genre set in small town America, and we found it so evocative and amazing that you can listen to something and be transported so powerfully. So we decided to start investigating whether you could put true crime on stage, especially in that podcast format.

So we started workshopping it, and then very quickly brought John in to provide the sonic landscape of the show. We found this particular story in a hunt for a story set in small town America, which we felt would fit the genre. The story of Kenrex is a whole town coming together to overcome adversity. We knew we wanted to tell it with with being with me playing all the parts, therefore, we were like, “How on earth am I going to play a whole town?” For some reason, we decided to stick with it!

Can you go a bit into the creative process for Kenrex?

Jack: Once we'd found that story, we very much wanted to keep the form of the show in the podcast style. In a true crime podcast, you have a bit of narration, a primary source, like a recording of a phone call, court recording or transcript, and then you have some reconstructed scenes. So we knew we wanted the form to be mosaic storytelling... And then we just kept on doing different versions of different scenes until we found the arrangement we were happy with. And in amongst all that and underscoring the entire thing, John created incredible sound and music. 

John: You invited me to Wilton’s Music Hall first! Jack and Ed were doing a week of R&D on this idea. You'd already written some stuff, and I joined you with a bunch of speakers and some blue pedals, maybe guitar. I think I was hitting a big wooden box at some point!

I loved coming in to do this, because you're suddenly in a completely different world. You're in the Midwest in the 70s. How do you create that soundscape with only a guitar and a box? And the thrill of being able to put that together in the moment while Jack was being all these different characters and telling the story! 

Ed: And that is the true crime nature of the show as well. The best true crime podcasts force you to use your imagination, because you're listening and piecing together the story from fragments of information. We describe Kenrex as a big box of evidence. It's like a big box of files - here's all the bits of this story. The audience become armchair detectives, piecing it together and working out how it happened and who did what. 

Jack: Fast forward several years, and we're actually creating the show up in Sheffield. All of the set, sound and lighting design elements came together around that time too, guided by Ed's direction. The sound design from Giles Thomas was about immersing the audience in the midst of the podcast, and as if you are in Skidmore.

What was the research process like for Kenrex?

Jack: The thing about the Kenrex story, it's 100% true, but it's been reported on and turned into many articles and a couple of movies, and there's been an Amazon documentary series. 

Ed: There's so much factual information out there because the story captured the imagination of the American public when it happened. It was this remarkably audacious thing, because it was a big challenge to the sense of justice in America. So it was widely covered in newspapers at the time, and there's this amazing documentary that was made six months after the events in Skidmore. They went to the town and interviewed a bunch of the townsfolk, and a lot of those people are characters in the play. So we had this real first-hand source of what it was like and what those people were like. We had so much information to draw on! So, as Jack says, it was about choosing which bits we could we could show.

And John, how did all of the history of this contribute to your creation with the music side of the show?

John: Well, I listened to a lot of American music anyway! When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of of that era, the 70s and early 80s, so a lot of that is in my bones. And then the research I did into the folk traditions of of the Midwest, of Missouri, especially - there's so much crossover with my own heritage. I'm Irish, and Irish folk music is very similar in structure and arrangement to a lot of the traditional music I listen to. So it's all completely original, but it's very much inspired by that era of American folk rock, some traditional music. And then that gets mangled with the podcast sound world, which is where we get our more cinematic music, which does incorporate more electronic stuff to help us ramp up the terror in the story as it builds.

Ed: And John plays all of it live during the show, which is one of the big selling points of the show. People talk about it as a one-man show, but really it's a two-man show. It's a duet between Jack and John, and John is a multi-instrumentalist and plays about six different guitars, a keyboard and has all of these electronic samples! So the two of them are playing this concert together every night, so it feels like going to a live gig as well. Proper fun night out at the theatre!

You mentioned that there's so many different characters, but it's only the two people on stage. What went into that decision to just have just John and Jack performing?

Jack: There's always the economic element to it. There was a time when this almost became a show for a cast of ten, but we ultimately returned to the smaller scale version of the show. We had a bit of success with Cruise, which was a similar format. John and I were dueting on stage for that in a very different story, but a similar form. We decided to come back to Kenrex and go, “Actually, this was good. This works. We can do this again.”

Ed: And Giles Thomas, who has done all the sound design for the show, has created a microphone plot for the show that is more complicated than most musicals out there! He's supporting the work that Jack is doing vocally with different microphone settings and dynamics for each character. Obviously, Jack is doing an extraordinary amount of work, but it's also accentuated by this high tech and sophisticated digital production.

What is it like to be returning to the Kenrex now, this time at The Other Palace?

John: I haven't had chance to think about it yet - I just got back from a tour! I did listen back to some of the music while I was away. It's nice having the music out there in between doing runs of the show, because it feels like the world is still bubbling away for audiences - people are still sharing it online. It'll be nice to go back to it live, though! There's a very big guitar chord early on in the show. As soon as I hit that in the theatre, I'll feel like I'm back in Skidmore, back in Kenrex-land.

Jack: But it's also exciting to move to a bigger theatre so more people can see the show! We're able to do a bit more in The Other Palace - we've got a few more bells and whistles to throw at the show. We're gonna up the ante to eleven, so it's gonna be really exciting!

What is it about true crime that you think keeps people so fascinated with it?

Ed: For me, a big thing is, again, justice. People listen to true crime because they have an innate sense of right and wrong - they want people who do bad things to be caught, and they want people who haven't done bad things to be free. Fundamentally, it really appeals to our sense of justice and the frustration that we have when we think that people are getting away with something that they shouldn't.

John: I've always thought the show is about this concept of the truth, I mean true crime, it’s in the word! But I think the reason that true crime fascinates us so much is most of these stories are about several versions of the truth colliding - whose is the real one? And with that happening so much in the current climate across across the board, what is the truth anymore? How do we weed out the truth? In Kenrex, what happens when a whole community of people decide that something is true, and we know it's not? That's where the thrill of it comes from for me.

What do you hope audiences take away from Kenrex?

Ed: I hope they have a really good night out. It's a fun night out! It's thrilling and exciting. And John and Jack are extraordinary performers - it makes for a really fun evening. And then, like Jack and John just said, to sit in the grey area a little bit. We want people to come out at the end and ask themselves, “What would we do if we were in that position?” 

Jack: Yeah, it's really gripping theatre. And the central question is exactly that - what would you do? What was so pleasing was that lots of people were like, “This is exactly the kind of thing I can bring my dad or my husband or my boyfriend too.” It's theatre, but it's also a gig. It's blisteringly high-paced, and it's cinematic. 

John: I like what you said, Jack, about how it's a gig as well, because I do love that people seem to come out with that. I see the audience afterwards sometimes, and it reminds me of an audience after a gig, shell-shocked by the sound -  you really feel it! I love that. It gives people that same feeling.

Jack: People leave with a real buzz!

And finally, how would you describe Kenrex in one word?

Ed: Explosive!

Jack: Thrill-ride.

John: Roller-coaster, because when we hit that first chord, it's like, “Okay, we're off,” and it just doesn't let up for the whole show!

Kenrex runs from 3 December 2025 - 1 February 2026 at The Other Palace.