The advantage of basing drama on real events, particularly emotive ones like the 2005 London bombings, is that they have inbuilt resonance; the disadvantage, all too apparent in 2013 play Warde Street, is that it can be challenging to articulate a revelatory view. Familiarity with the arguments and sentiments expressed in this 80-minute piece vastly lessens its impact, and a burst of late tension (chiefly earned via the shortcut of a firearm) is further diminished by dubious use of reverse chronology. It’s a short play with grand ambition, sadly unfulfilled.

According to Johnny Marr people with gigantic egos are generally miserable. Jokes about Morrissey aside, it follows Marr must be a pretty contented guy. For what other guitarist with his reputation would have put vanity aside to spend 20-odd years as a gun for hire? Now, however, it seems the affable muso finally wants to be a solo artist. Last year he released the interesting, if patchy, The Messenger. Now he’s back with Playland. So what’s it like?

A mental blur of airports, stations and dangly cardboard air freshener, minicab-driving has always seemed vulnerable to cliché. The problem facing Vince McKee, David Morrissey‘s driver protagonist in BBC One’s new three-parter, is that the rest of his life is even more dull. His job as a cabbie, involving copious urine, vomit, and a stiletto heel to the neck before he gets tangled up in a criminal gang, is action-packed by contrast.

There was a time, around 25 years ago, when Inspiral Carpets’ psyche-eyed cow logo, accompanied by the motto “Cool as Fuck”, was ubiquitous on tee-shirts. Along with the Charlatans, they represented the second tier of the “Madchester” movement, trailing behind Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. Unlike the preposterously revered Roses, however, Inspiral Carpets’ music has drifted out of the radio-played heritage rock canon.

Having been put to the fiddle at the age of five, Nicola Benedetti appreciates the value of making music at an early age. She is fiercely committed to music education and developing new talent. So it was a joy to see her playing enthusiastically with 30 primary school children as a pre-concert curtain raiser to the start of Manchester Camerata’s new season.

Instead of that small well-worn stone balcony in that courtyard in Verona, picture an extended well-worn cast-iron balcony in the Victoria Baths in Manchester. The young lovers have ample room to move in the labyrinthine interior of the old building, with its three disused tiled swimming pools and ecclesiastical stained glass windows. Romeo is the length of a cricket pitch away as he addresses Juliet on the balcony and, for some reason, is moved to do a take on “Love Me Do”.

One of the oddities about theatre is that there can be a gripping performance at the heart of an underwhelming production – and so is the case with Maxine Peake’s Hamlet, directed by Sarah Frankcom. This was a much anticipated production – Peake going home, as it were. She started acting at the Royal Exchange Youth Group and is now an associate artist at the theatre, and has recently been seen giving a towering performance in The Village on BBC One.

When Ryan Gander’s wife wanted a designer lamp, the versatile artist knocked one up from junk. She was so impressed he sold it as an artwork and by now has made 55 in his garden shed. Three are here in Manchester, made from foil food trays, a guitar stand and concrete. These pieces are quite unrepresentative of the rest of this highly conceptual show, but in a diverse, major survey there appears to be no truly representative way in.

Oasis: Definitely Maybe

There's a bit of Gene Hunt revisited in Peter Bowker's new three-part drama. Philip Glenister returns to the Manchester stomping grounds he patrolled in Life on Mars, and he even drives an Audi (though it isn't Hunt's celebrated Quattro).  But this time he's not a cop.