The Streets Are Paved With Murder Review

An ensemble improv comedy folds the social-deduction game Mafia into a truly spontaneous structure — and the audience, armed with a QR code, is written into the outcome.

Eugene Blazejowski Walsh reviews The Streets Are Paved With Murder, an ensemble improv-comedy murder mystery hosted by James Kehoe that borrows the structure of the social-deduction game Mafia, staged at Factory Theatre as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2026. Entertaining if occasionally uneven, the show is strongest when individual performers commit to taking their characters overboard — and its most interesting feature, the writer argues, is a feedback loop in which our enjoyment is structurally built into the show's outcome.

Reviewed by Eugene Blazejowski Walsh.

A QR code lies at the feet of the audience. We will reach for our phones at several points throughout the show, to vote for a fictional character to be exiled from the fictional town we reside in.

It is a premise both silly and strange, but by now we are all invested. This is The Streets Are Paved With Murder - an ensemble improv comedy that folds in the game Mafia to create a truly spontaneous structure. Does it succeed? Yes, with exceptions.

Mafia, a social deduction game often played at parties, models a conflict between two teams - the mafioso and the villagers. At the start of the game, each player is secretly assigned to one of these teams. As day becomes night, and night becomes day again, players debate each other. Then, they are either murdered by the mafioso or voted to be exiled by all in a repeating cycle as each team vies to be the last one standing.

Think of the hit TV series The Traitors as a current adaptation of this format. Where The Traitors is about performing survival for the camera, this show is about watching people perform comedy for a live audience. The result is entertaining, while occasionally uneven.

A minimal but purposeful design

The design is minimal but purposeful: the lectern, eight chairs to the left, and Irene Nicola on the piano to the right, who scored each scene so well that I completely forgot she was there. Everything else is mimed, the right choice for a show where the characters and their costuming are the entire visual world.

In The Streets Are Paved With Murder, we are introduced by our omniscient host, James Kehoe, to eight archetypal characters ahead of their town's lawn chair festival. Kehoe, standing at a lectern, regulates the show - holding the line between a structured comedy show and one that could run off the rails.

He calls up different character combinations to play off each other in a series of improv scenes. These pairings are most consequential in the introductory scenes, determining which relationships the audience will invest in.

As night arrives, the lights dim to blue and we are asked to close our eyes. It is here that the murderers are chosen, and choose their first victim.

When day breaks, and the victim is revealed, the characters once again play off each other to uncover the killer, and the audience votes via QR code to determine a collective 1.5 votes in addition to those on-stage. Sometimes this felt symbolic of the mood in the room, and at others it felt decisive in influencing the course of the show.

We meet Twitch-streamer elected mayor ZackyStacks (Josh Magee), professional face painter Madalayne Monet (Jess Allen), survivalist Randy Trotter (Orya Golgowsky), matchmaker and sex therapist Tracey Luffs (Lily Hensby), librarian Dewey Deschanel (Jack Moran), conspiracy theorist Tim Foil (Alex Reynolds), pickle maker Dill Pickle (Jonah Maranan), and parking inspector Karen Spector (Clare Cavanagh).

Characters taken overboard

Each character is immediately readable, such as with Tim Foil's crazy eyes, black marker beard, and signature foil hat, or Tracey Luffs' summer dress and wavering Southern accent.

"The show is strongest when individual performers commit to taking their characters overboard."

Tim Foil, Tracey Luffs, and Randy Trotter were standouts. Each found bits with other characters and ran with them rather than waiting for scenes to be written around them. They understood from the outset what the audience found funny and kept feeding it.

Some cast members were less consistent. Occasionally, the flow of some scenes was interrupted by characters talking over each other to land a line - though never for more than half a second. However, this is the trade-off of live improv.

Dill Pickle, the first to be murdered in this run of the show, was also funny in both their demeanour and delivery. But they also fell victim to the show's cruellest structural irony - that characters are always at risk of being cut short by the nature of the game. Though as they are eliminated they don't exit, but stand to the left of the stage where they can still interject from beyond the grave.

A production built collaboratively

This is a production built collaboratively between audience and actors. When someone was voted out, a choice was made that affected what the rest of the show looked like. The audience, through the QR codes, influenced the narrative.

The audience's willingness to laugh made the performers even more willing to commit, compounding the comedy. This feedback loop, this relationship with the audience, is the show's most interesting feature. Our enjoyment is structurally built into the show's outcome.

"Our enjoyment is structurally built into the show's outcome."

The show succeeds most completely when the audience is most actively generating the comedy alongside the performers, which is not always within the production's control, but when it lands, it lands fully.

This is the kind of thing I would see again, curious as to how it would play out anew when the murderers have changed, the characters die in different orders, and the audience votes differently. This was the most fun I've had at the Sydney Fringe Festival so far.

The Streets Are Paved With Murder — an ensemble improv-comedy murder mystery that uses the structure of the social-deduction game Mafia. Factory Theatre, 19–20 September 2026, as part of Sydney Fringe Festival 2026.

Host: James Kehoe
Piano / Score: Irene Nicola
ZackyStacks (Twitch-streamer mayor): Josh Magee
Madalayne Monet (face painter): Jess Allen
Randy Trotter (survivalist): Orya Golgowsky
Tracey Luffs (matchmaker / sex therapist): Lily Hensby
Dewey Deschanel (librarian): Jack Moran
Tim Foil (conspiracy theorist): Alex Reynolds
Dill Pickle (pickle maker): Jonah Maranan
Karen Spector (parking inspector): Clare Cavanagh

Reviewed by Eugene Blazejowski Walsh.

Venue: Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Road, Marrickville NSW 2204 (Gadigal/Wangal Country). Rated M. Running time: 1 hour.

Photography by Rachel Madison Photography.