Dancers Ako Kondo and Chengwu Guo travelled great distances at a very young age to join The Australian Ballet. Here in Australia, they’ve risen to become award-winning artists and principals at the company — but they also found each other, beginning a fairy-tale romance and inspiring each other to new heights.

Also, Broadway's longest-running show The Phantom of the Opera will soon give up the ghost, and ahead of a new Australian production, we ask Agatha Christie biographer Laura Thompson why The Mousetrap — the longest-running play in London — endures.

Les Misérables opened on the West End in 1985 and is still running, making it London's longest-running musical. It's by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, who are in Australia to present a concert of their best-loved songs performed by the crème de la crème of musical theatre.

Also, Maori man Rodney Bell (Ngāti Maniapoto) traces his journey from butcher and rugby player to celebrated dancer and wheelchair user in Meremere and Broadway performer Nikki Snelson guides young performers to new heights in the University of Adelaide's production of Legally Blonde the Musical.

We pay tribute to Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Woiwurrung and Yorta Yorta actor, writer and activist and elder Jack Charles who has died at the age of 79.

Also, Stephen Karam's Tony Award-winning play The Humans is now a film, directed by the playwright himself, and we unpack Charles III's first speech as king, a tribute to his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, which ended with a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In his 50-year career, English writer David Hare has written more than 30 plays. His latest, Straight Line Crazy, features a powerhouse performance by Ralph Fiennes as the autocratic American road builder, Robert Moses. 

Also, experimental theatre-maker Robert Wilson transports audiences into an almost trance-like state of stillness. His Moving Portraits now on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia invoke a similar sense of stillness and theatricality.

If the border closures of the last two years have a silver lining for Australian artists and audiences, it must be the renewed focus on Australian work at our capital-city arts festivals.

This year's Brisbane Festival demonstrates what that kind of investment can achieve, with an array of world premieres gracing the city's stages, including Holding Achilles, Tiddas, Slow Boat and Othello.

An operatic adaptation of Hamlet by the celebrated Australian composer Brett Dean this year made its North American debut at the famous Metropolitan Opera in New York. Brett joins us to reflect on his career and the challenge of bringing Shakespeare’s famous Dane to the opera stage.

Also, we hear a scene from Dorr-e Dari, a celebration of love expressed in poetry, music and stories drawn from the Persian-speaking world and we delve into the golden age of radio drama with Peter Philp, author of Drama in Silent Rooms: A History of Radio Drama in Australia from 1920s to 1970s.

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, Elena Kats-Chernin's opera Iphis gets a timely revival by Lyric Opera in Melbourne and we chart the rise of the First Nations theatre company Ilbijerri as they continue their 30th birthday celebrations.

In 2002, John Waters' brash and big-hearted musical comedy Hairspray was adapted for the Broadway stage. It won eight Tony Awards, including one for its director Jack O'Brien. Twenty years on, Jack is at the helm of a new revival here in Australia.

Also, award-winning playwright Christopher Chen shares his Top Shelf ahead of the Australian premiere of his play Caught and theatre-maker Elnaz Sheshgelani transforms Hamlet using the ancient Persian performance style Naghali.

After wowing audiences at the Royal Albert Hall and The Metropolitan Opera in New York, Australian soprano Helena Dix is back on home soil to sing the challenging title role of Lucrezia Borgia.

Also, Arts Minister Tony Burke is taking submissions and holding town hall meetings across the country to inform the Government's new National Cultural Policy and economist David Throsby and Nyoongar/Yamatji curator Clothilde Bullen share their perspectives on what the arts sector needs right now.

Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill is now a jukebox musical. But how has this achingly personal collection of songs been transformed into a show about an American family coming apart at the seams? We ask the show's Oscar and Tony-winning writer, Diablo Cody.

Also, we meet Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss who wrote Six the Musical for the Edinburgh Fringe as students and have since opened the show on Broadway and the West End and won a Tony Award.