Updated
Anne Odeke, Andrew French and Alice Blundell in The Rage of Achilles
It sounds crass to suggest that this year of great heartbreak and loss could turn out to be in any way good for the arts. The past ten months have laid waste to so many lives, livelihoods and dreams; it is doubtful that anyone will look back on 2020 with fondness. And yet the extraordinary nature of these times is leading to works of extraordinary creativity, with artists doing things that are genuinely new.
There is a production of A Christmas Carol which dissolves the boundary between cinema and theatre. There is also an exquisite horror film called Host, which is set in a Zoom call. These things would not have been made in any other year. And nor would Troy Story, in which the RSC has essentially invented a genre. That it exists at all is a miracle; that it is good is a mere bonus.