I liked this one, but I did not love it — for precisely the same reasons I expect many others do love it.
From a technical perspective, Kenrex is a knockout. The lighting and sound are sensational, the set is impressively well thought out and utilized, and Jack Holden is very good in the leading role (if not quite as show-stoppingly brilliant as he’d been made out to me to be beforehand). He admirably imbues this frenetic story with a great sense of stakes and pace, and only gets the many characters of the show muddled towards the end when all of them are being cycled through in quick succession and you realize he’s only actually using about 5 distinct physicalities for all of them, which does get confusing when trying to decipher who’s talking. Thankfully this issue is brief.
The real thing here is that I don’t know that Kenrex is much of a play. It’s certainly very entertaining and gripping, but it’s also basically an audio book or podcast with fancy visual effects. There’s no real message, and the moral question at the end feels too tacked on and devoid of examination to pack any real punch. So while it’s a wonderfully interesting and entertaining night at the theater, I couldn’t help but feel as though it’s essentially a true crime podcast onstage rather than a full theatrical endeavor. That, I suspect, may be exactly what some people are looking for, and why this show has been so highly praised by many — it just is not what I personally prefer in my plays.
