A leading actor tortured by the inability to play a role he can't feel. A narcissistic starlet unashamedly flaunting her sexuality. A group of second bananas complaining about the sizes of their roles. A sweet-faced ingénue enduring the advances of an older sponsor. A clueless playwright convinced that his pedestrian dialogue is marvelous.

No, Genesius Guild isn't tackling Terrence McNally or Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, but rather Henri Gheon, whose play The Comedian opened at Lincoln Park this past Saturday.

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most magical offerings - a wildly theatrical concoction set on an enchanted isle populated by fairies, sprites, and spirits, and governed by a benevolent (yet easily enraged) ruler in possession of a supernatural cloak.

Given the built-in limitations in budget and production design at Rock Island's Lincoln Park, though, no one attending Genesius Guild's current production of the play should expect to be wowed by spectacle; Ariel, for instance, won't be flying in on any invisible wires. Yet from its first scene, this Tempest is graced by spectacle of a different variety: the sort of stage alchemy that occurs when fine performers tear into rich material, and when a strong director orchestrates the actors' contributions and stage pictures with inventiveness and grace. Imagination, of course, is its own kind of magic.

Ah, Genesius Guild. By the time the company's Saturday-night production of Much Ado About Nothing commenced, the quality of the show barely mattered, because I was already thoroughly amused by the audience.

For 43 years, Don Wooten has been re-writing Greek history. His history lessons are anything but serious or classroom-worthy, and that's all right with him. Wooten, the founder of Genesius Guild theatre group, has most recently altered the more outdated sections of Aristophanes' comedy Plutus to make its already-quirky script even quirkier and more accessible to modern audiences. Wooten has added musical numbers and touches of local humor about bridge construction and the Mallards hockey team, and he addresses national issues such as war, education, President Bush, and television infomercials. With a bit of assistance from Aristophanes, Wooten has produced an appealing script.