The Week in Entertainment

Live: First, the fabulous The Book of Mormon at the Hippodrome. What a blast! Such a fun show. Then Prince Igor at the Met, with Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role and the splendid Oksana Dyka (who must have been thinking about her homeland's troubles, reflecting the plot of the opera) but who really stole the show. The staging was new and kind of odd (why do they insist on describing things as "timeless" when they have stuff like rifles, electricity and late-19th or early-20th century uniforms in them???) but intriguing. Having the first act take place in a poppy field of Igor's injury-haunted mind sets the stage for his return (though having the scene where his son elects to stay behind rather than escape back home set in Putivl after he returns - a flashback, basically - is rather confusing; at first I thought they were saying that she had followed all the way). Igor is a mess, of course, since Borodin died before he'd finished it, and at least in this version it's all his music.

TV: A very funny and moving The Crazy Ones. I had no idea bar mitzvahs were such big business! The Middle was good, too. Perception is back, which surprised me (thanks, DVR!), with a nice twisty little story. Modern Family. Psych is winding down, with Juliet leaving, the Chief gone, and Lassie now Chief of Police...

Read: Dust, the ending to the Wook saga, which raised a few more questions than it answered, but was satisfying nonetheless. And finished Carthage, Joyce Carol Oates's intricate, bizarre and engrossing new novel.