‘Bananaland’ Has an Appetite for Democrats

Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta next month are being invited to relax at a new kind of theme park: Bananaland.

Located in the Little Five Points area--Atlanta’s Greenwich Village--it is dedicated to the banana and its role in the economy of Central America.

“You can enjoy a banana smoothie at the Banana Bar, catch a cabaret show or hop a train ride through a banana plantation,” says a press release on banana-yellow paper.

“You can even buy fabulous overpriced banana memorabilia at BANANALAND’S own gift shop!”

Right: It’s a spoof. “Bananaland” is a theater piece, of the new site-specific variety, focusing on the United Fruit Co.’s activities in Central America.

According to producers Ruby Lerner and George King, the piece started out to be a serious documentary called “The Banana Project,” with material from the Tulane University Latin American museum.

The aim is still serious: “to encourage people to critically reassess America’s relationship to developing nations, particularly those in Central America.”

But since there’s something inherently comical about bananas (unless one is picking them), it was decided to turn the piece into an “info-tainment,” using a theme-park theme.

“We’ve had a wonderful time doing theme-park research--Epcot, Gatorland, Citrusworld and, yes, we confess, the Tupperware Museum,” say Lerner and King. “We think we’re nuts, but it’s an interesting idea.”

Twenty Atlanta artists are involved, and the piece opens July 7. More information at (404) 522-0911.

Like many actors, Derek Jacobi has said he’d eventually like to direct. He has made a start, at his old theater, the Birmingham Repertory, with a play he knows a good deal about, “Hamlet.”

Lois Potter’s review in the Times Literary Supplement gives Jacobi’s production high marks for “never losing the name of action” and for providing such small sympathetic touches as this: When Gertrude laments Ophelia’s drowning, her own skirt and gloves are covered with mud.

Jacobi’s Hamlet is Kenneth Branagh, not too “princely,” but “a man who could have run his country well.” As with Ingmar Bergman’s production in New York, Fortinbras is a cool-eyed killer.

“Hypnotic and transporting,” said the New York Times’ Mel Gussow after seeing Shogo Ohta’s “The Water Station” at the First New York International Festival of the Arts last week. (It plays the Japan American Theatre this weekend.)

This is the piece where, for two hours, a series of travelers visit a water spigot, in total silence. Gussow was fascinated, but acknowledged that the piece sent some people in the audience off to dreamland.

Local performances at JAT are at 8 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday. Information at (213) 680-3700.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. Carol Matthau, on Hollywood, in Lear’s magazine: “There is no ‘they’ who destroy you here. You yourself are ‘they.’ Your corruption creates the crust that insulates you from shame as you make that slightly sleazy, manipulative business phone call, couched in trills of pretend love.”