What am I to make of “The Rose of Lidice”? Tamo Nara invited us to the latest production of the courtyard theater troupe that did the 9/11 play. It was in the dirty and depressing Chi'nga shopping mall. What idiot thought of leveling the hill for this abomination?

We were there early so go to hang out with some of the actors. I was grilled about the troupe’s prospects in NYC. Oy vey.

The play is set in Czechoslovakia in 1942. Tamo Nara had evidently written a poem, his communist soul stirred by the children who brought him flowers when he visited Lidice with his comrades way back when there was still a Berlin Wall. So was the troupe sucking up to him by putting on this play? Is it how collaboration actually works? After all the Minister of Culture is a poet. Who knows, and what does it matter?

So their ballet was stolen from a film of Anna Pavlova Tamo Nara had. The heroines' names were Milky and Silky – and those you can’t steal from anywhere. And the Hitler was the most hilarious caricature since Chaplin. They must have seen The Great Dictator: the scene with Hitler contemplating the globe would be too scary a coincidence.

It is wonderful to see something that confounds all aesthetic standards. How lazy and conformist the cultural tastemakers truly are!