Shakespeare retold: Amara Karan (left) as Hero and Sagar Arya as Claudio

Much ado about a lot, actually

Having opened in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Much Ado About Nothing has just transferred to London’s West End and will be on at the Noel Coward Theatre in St Martin’s Lane until October 27.

After having seen the production when it opened in Stratford-upon-Avon on July 26, my feeling was that this play was the most enjoyable entertainment available to British Asians since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, Bombay Dreams, way back in 2002. I think that is still the case.

So if anyone happens to be in London in October and is wondering what to see, the answer is the RSC’s Much Ado About Nothing. The original setting has been switched from the Italian port of Messina on the island of Sicily to a farmhouse outside Delhi of the kind that Suresh Kalmadi, for example, might own.

Last week was press night, when the theatre was packed with the British Asian luvvie set plus Asian “celebrities”. I say Asian instead of Indian because among the thespians, there is not much of a distinction between Indians and Pakistanis. Nearly all of them drink red wine — and many of the women rush out during the interval to have a quick cigarette.

The whole production has a Punjabi-Gujarati feel to it but I was taken aback when I heard Paul Bhattacharjee, who plays the lead role of Benedick, utter, “Khub shundor (very beautiful),” in Bengali. Sitting next to me was film director Sangeeta Datta, who assured me that there had been two previous Bengali snatches from Paul.

Not that she is biased but she ruled: “Paul Bhattacharjee is the best.”

Much Ado About Nothing is not one of the Shakespeare plays I did at school but the storyline — attempts at matchmaking by well-meaning friends and relatives initially going wrong before all the threads are happily pulled together at the end — is as easy as following a Hindi film. In fact, this version did feel like a Bollywood movie.

If the Bard had been present, he would probably have scratched his head periodically: “I can’t remember writing that scene.”

At one point, for example, a group of young actors make a Usain Bolt gesture.

Summer’s end: Glorious bloom

Dahlia dreams

Once, when Shimla was still Simla, I remember coming across giant dahlias growing in the gardens of what was the vice-regal lodge. Alas, attempts to grow dahlias in London have not been successful.

“The soil’s not right,” my wife has kept telling me.

But the garden centre business in the UK is huge — it was estimated at £4 billion in 2009. This year my wife ordered dahlia bulbs advertised as a special offer in one paper.

It is hard to describe the thrill when after weeks of careful tending, the first dahlia, a vivid orange colour, emerged. Since it has been a wet summer, all gardens have been full of snails and slugs. When one dahlia plant was transferred from pot to the soil, it was eaten overnight. This has meant wandering round the garden with a torchlight in the dead of night and catching the hungry snails and slugs when they least expect it.

And now, after a couple of really hot days with clear blue skies in early September, summer is over. But there is something soft and gentle about autumn in England.

The dahlias in the pots are very leafy and full of bud. My wife, who has had a triumph this summer with her lilies, hollyhocks and an old climbing rose, thinks they will open. In the parks and in the streets, the ground beneath the horse chestnut trees is covered with fallen conkers.

Wonder warning: Rachel Carson

Silent Spring

There has been a fair bit on the radio marking the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It came out on September 27, 1962.

The landmark book, which is credited with ushering in the environmental movement, warned that pesticides, notably DDT, had harmful side effects. Many of the chemicals stayed in the soil for months or even years and killed off birds and other wildlife — hence the warning about a “silent spring”.

An article in The New York Times recalled a comment made to Carson by senator Ernest Gruening, a Democrat from Alaska: “Every once in a while in the history of mankind, a book has appeared which has substantially altered the course of history.”

The paper said: “On June 4, 1963, less than a year after the controversial environmental classic Silent Spring was published, its author, Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, testified before a senate subcommittee on pesticides. She was 56 and dying of breast cancer... Her pelvis was so riddled with fractures that it was nearly impossible for her to walk to her seat at the wooden table before the Congressional panel.”

A report last week on the BBC said that the book turned the chemical DDT, which had been hailed as “one of the wonders of the world”, “into a villain”.

Carson died in 1964. DDT was banned in the US eight years later.

The author’s great nephew and adopted son, Roger Christie, who was 10 when Silent Spring was published, observed: “We hold the power to destroy things if we are not careful.”

Classic highlight: Ray’s Mahanagar

Big city

Judging from calls from friends and acquaintances who want to know how to get complimentary tickets, one of the Indian draws in the London Film Festival this year is Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar, set in 1950s Calcutta.

On October 13, a new restored print is going to be screened.

These days an educated girl with a good salary has a higher price in the marriage market. But it was not always thus.

“Subrata Mazumdar is a young bank clerk struggling to support his entire extended family on a meagre salary, and is duly horrified when his wife Arati (a ravishing, spirited performance from Madhabi Mukherjee) offers to help by going out to work as a ‘salesgirl’,” says an explanatory note from Margaret Deriaz.

“For this new restoration, undertaken in India, the original negative was scanned at a high resolution (2K), enabling the film’s epic scale and intimate detail — from the portrayal of big city life to the exquisite play of emotions on Arati’s face — to emerge in greater beauty and clarity,” she adds.

Boris, again

Trust Boris to be different. Fellow Etonian Boris claims David Cameron pretended not to know the meaning of Magna Carta (Great Paper) when he appeared on the The Late Show with David Letterman because he did not want to come across as being too clever.

Tittle tattle

It is easy to see why the London School of Economics is able to maintain its place as one of the world’s leading universities. It has announced that the “phenomenal Indian filmmaker, Mr Karan Johar” will deliver an address at the LSE on October 1.

There will be also an opportunity for the brightest students “to interact with the starcast of Student of the Year — Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt”.

The LSE believes “Student of the Year” is about academic excellence.