In the interim, the idea caught on that by throwing odd characters together on the stage, or in a book, you would have the ingredients of comic conflict.
Not at all coincidentally Tim Dorsey's new comic novel features these same ingredients, although Mr. Dorsey's hapless tourists come from Wisconsin.
Add to this the increasingly convoluted tactics of the local authorities, ever eager to exploit gullible foreigners, and the rigors of operating in a climate where the daytime temperature could soar above 120 degrees, and you have the ingredients for a comic melodrama that, had he less amour-propre, Belzoni might easily have brought to the stage.
Star power and comic timing, two things age can't touch, are the essential ingredients for success with this character.
He almost anthropomorphizes his ingredients, bringing them to life with stories both tragic and comic.
Radio also provided Hope with the one crucial ingredient missing from his rapid-fire stage patter: a comic character.
Let's just say they aren't very pacific but are the ingredients for the delectable material delivered by the show's brilliant, tart, comic writers.
Shot entirely in the studio, "Bunraku" offers ingredients — sagebrush posturing, samurai swords, noir shadows and neon, "Warriors -style rumbles, comic-book flashbacks, a hint of MGM musicals — that could have composed a fanboy feast.
It reflects unflinchingly back at the reader the sheer, comic absurdity of man's fallen humanity.Each great novelist brings to the art his own special ingredient.
