Fast improv for beautifully bad ideas.
Alchemy This is sketch improv built from oddball premises, listener suggestions, and instant group escalation. A casual setup can become a doomsday intake line, a disastrous casting notice, or a restaurant argument about how many appetizers count as “apps.”
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Alchemy This is a sketch-improv show built around strange prompts and a fast-moving ensemble mind. The scenes do not sit still for long. A setup about doomsday preppers can turn into a tense intake process where someone receives only starter shoes and pants, then starts worrying about the family stuck outside. A holiday production can become an HR complaint about grown adults taking children’s roles. A restaurant bit can stretch the word “apps” until the whole table is suddenly negotiating appetizers like a woodland survival strategy. That is the basic engine: ordinary language gets snagged, overexplained, and pushed until it breaks funny.
The show’s best moments come from everyone treating nonsense as if it has policy, history, and consequences. Characters correct one another. Then they correct the correction. Someone asks for a note, a suggestion, or a clarification, and the scene uses that tiny opening to sprint somewhere else. It feels conversational before it feels theatrical, which gives the stranger turns a useful looseness. The performers sound comfortable interrupting each other, but the energy is collaborative rather than combative.
Recent episodes point toward a broad comic appetite: inherited circus trouble, post-apocalyptic domestic order, substitute teaching, date-and-restaurant social awkwardness, and speculative scenarios about knowing everything in the universe. The show also appears to use listener prompts, including a doomsday-prepper scene suggestion from Roman. It is not polished story comedy, and it is not careful observational stand-up. It is more like a room full of people taking a bad idea seriously enough that it becomes a location, a job, a complaint, and then a problem nobody can sensibly solve. The humor can be blunt, crude, and chaotic, but underneath the noise is a clear pleasure in ensemble timing.
Made for: Best for comedy listeners who like ensemble improv, absurd premises, and scenes that escalate through interruptions, corrections, and petty invented rules. It suits people who enjoy rowdy room energy more than polished storytelling.
What sets it apart: Alchemy This stands out by committing hard to tiny misunderstandings and letting them become entire sketch worlds. The funniest turns often come from procedural nonsense: cast lists, doomsday rules, restaurant terms, and fake workplace authority.
Award-winning actor and comedian Kevin Pollak has gathered five extraordinarily-talented improvisors to capture lightning in a bottle in the way that only great improv can. In each episode, he presents uniquely bizarre scenarios for he and them to hilariously bring to life.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Alchemy This builds absurd scenes by giving foolish decisions rules, consequences, and characters determined to defend them.
Alchemy This turns an odd premise into a roomful of competing logic, then lets the scene grow through commitment rather than explanation. Kevin Pollak and the ensemble treat every new detail as usable material, building Sketch Improv from characters who accept ridiculous…
A doomsday bunker forgot the bathroom; you get to enjoy the world's least reassuring survival plan.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A missing boyfriend, disputed appetizers, and a comedy pitch fuel a brisk run of escalating arguments.
The episode turns small social grievances into a tight comic squeeze, starting with a furious complaint about a missing boyfriend and sliding into a restaurant fight over what counts as "free apps." The humor comes from how ordinary details keep becoming evidence: a borrowed…
A lightly framed Comedy pick with an open-ended appeal, though its specific premise remains thin.
Alchemy is hard to pin down as a single-episode recommendation, because the available material gives more of a promotional frame than a clear scene, premise, guest hook, or story beat.
A children's audition becomes an HR-style dispute when adults appear to land the roles.
A children's holiday production slides into workplace absurdity after a parent watches 17 or 18 grown adults leave the house, high-fiving and saying "in your face" once the kids' cast list goes up.
The title may sound promising, but there is not enough episode content here for a factual review.
Post-Apocalyptic Home Owners Association cannot be fairly recommended on the material available here. What is present does not establish the episode's premise, story, tone, characters, or comic approach, so there is no solid basis for saying what kind of listening experience it…
Starter supplies, closing doors, and a bathroom-free shelter turn practical panic into anxious comedy.
The review is strongest when it keeps its focus on two sturdy comic engines: Kyle reaching number seven with only starter shoes and starter pants, and Roman pitching a sealed doomsday shelter that somehow has no bathroom.
An oat-milk order tangles hazelnut syrup and sugar-free confusion into a precise little verbal mix-up.
A coffee order gets snagged on one small question: when the customer asks for oat milk and hazelnut, "sugar-free" is taken to describe the coffee instead of the syrup.
Tiny debates, treated with heroic seriousness.
Host Kevin Pollak and five improvisers perform scenes based on listener suggestions.
Host Kevin Pollak leads five improvisers through bizarre scenarios suggested by listeners.
Award-winning actor Kevin Pollak leads a team of improvisors in creating hilarious, unscripted scenarios.
Award-winning actor Kevin Pollak leads a group of improvisors in creating spontaneous comedic scenes from bizarre scenarios.
Kevin Pollak opens the final episode of Alchemy This and introduces the founding members: Craig Kakowski, Vanessa Ragland, Chris Alvarado, James Heaney, and Joey Greer.
Alchemy This opens with a patron prompt asking what happens when scientists finally learn everything there is to know about the universe, and the scene turns into a shutdown notice for Jim and his microscope.
Alchemy This uses listener-suggested scenes to build a circus story where Beauregard, a dog, inherits "his circus" while Bonzo tries to leave before the management change.
The HOA in a post-apocalypse argues over one bean a week, five-foot hedges, and whether Marty should get eaten.
James Heaney guest-hosts Alchemy This while Cole, Mark Gagley, and Craig Kikowski answer improvised questions before performing three listener-submitted scenes.
Award-winning actor Kevin Pollak leads a group of improvisors in creating spontaneous comedic scenes based on bizarre scenarios.