Imagine a world with no Macbeth, no Tempest and no Twelfth Night. Without the First Folio, published 400 years ago this year, those plays may have been lost to history. To mark its anniversary, Bell Shakespeare is presenting three plays from the First Folio in their 2023 season, starting with a new production of Macbeth directed by the company's artistic director, Peter Evans. 

For further insight into the publication and importance of the First Folio, we're joined by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford. She's the author of Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book.

After several years of delays, the Ballett Zürich production of Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem will feature at this year's Adelaide Festival. Brought to life by 36 dancers and over 170 singers performing with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, we meet the show's award-winning choreographer Christian Spuck.

Also, the oldest theatre on mainland Australia hosts a thoroughly modern makeover of Hansel and Gretel written by Lally Katz, and Australian Dance Theatre Artistic Director Daniel Riley pays tribute to his great-great uncle Alec Riley in Tracker, a co-production with Ilbijerri Theatre Company co-written by Ursula Yovich.

Ivo van Hove is renowned as one of the most innovative — and divisive — theatre directors working today. The Belgian's enthralling stage adaptations of classic works consistently subvert expectations. Now, van Hove's adaptation of the confronting novel A Little Life is coming to the Adelaide Festival.

Also, a married lesbian couple with two children face divorce in Blessed Union, a new comedy at Belvoir, and Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the longest-running play on London's West End, is touring Australia. But is it a paragon of modern theatre or a tourist trap?

We celebrate Sydney WorldPride with cabaret performer and drag artist Reuben Kaye. In his breathlessly entertaining shows, Kaye shares his family's extraordinary story of survival and how the arts carried him through trauma — all while singing up a storm.

Also, the Hayes Theatre Co revive Gentleman Prefer Blondes — but how is it a queer story? And we consider the evolution of queer performance through the years. In an era of increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ rights, how does queer storytelling maintain its vitality?

This year's Perth Festival takes us to the stars, with many events in the program inspired by stories of the cosmos. The West Australian Symphony Orchestra's concert Music of the Spheres included music from Australian composer Richard Mills' forthcoming opera Galileo, inspired by the life of the pioneering Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Also, Aboriginal dreaming stories inspire bold new theatrical work being staged under — and among — the stars, and Palawa writer Nathan Maynard and Māori writer Jamie McCaskill take us on an adventure across the sea and through the stars and spirit world in Hide the Dog.

Roald Dahl's beloved novel Matilda was brought to glorious life as a stage musical in 2010 and now it is on screen, once again buoyed by the clever, funny, moving songs by Tim Minchin.

Also, we revisit our conversation with another talented West Australian: the writer and actor Kate Mulvany. Kate will soon star in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Bernhardt/Hamlet.

What happens when we see real events and meet well-known people on stage? Can the theatre shape our sense of our own history? Those questions are raised by a new Australian play called Sunday. It features a knockout performance from Nikki Shiels as arts patron Sunday Reed.

Also, we're joined by the writer of Sunday, Anthony Weigh, to discuss what responsibilities artists have to truth and accuracy in stories based on actual events, and we continue our discussion of Australian history and theatre with the writer of a new play inspired by the shocking true events that rendered an Australian town uninhabitable.

If you've seen a performance by Bangarra Dance Theatre in the last 12 years, then you've seen the work of Jacob Nash. Jacob is Bangarra's head of design and he has created the dazzling sets for every Bangarra show since 2010. He is also a key creative force at the Sydney Festival.

Also, we hear a performance from the new opera The Priestess of Morphine, based on the life of Baroness Gertrud von Puttkamer who wrote lesbian erotic poems in the early 1900s under the pen name Marie-Madeleine, and we learn about the overlap between theatre and philosophy in Ancient Greece and a new playwriting competition that considers the absence of women in Greek philosophy.

Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Kip Williams' production of The Picture of Dorian Gray starred Eryn-Jean Norvill in all 26 roles and incorporated video screens to spectacular effect. Now, Williams has brought another classic to the stage: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Also, Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera and Cats were all produced by the same man: Cameron Mackintosh. In Australia for the opening of a new production of Mary Poppins, Cameron shares his journey from humble beginnings to producer extraordinaire.

Suzie Miller was a lawyer before she became a playwright. Now, Prima Facie, a play that takes her back to the courtroom, has launched her career on the West End and Broadway.

Also, experimental theatre-maker Robert Wilson transports audiences into an almost trance-like state of stillness. His Moving Portraits invoke a similar sense of stillness and theatricality.