ABSTRACT:

Baggage! We walk through life encumbered with baggage. Even traveling light, we hear that irremovable backpack, loaded with our past.

I was reminded of my own special baggage by two new plays last week, the first being Richard Nelson’s “Goodnight Children Everywhere” at Playwrights Horizons.

Apart from the fact that it is a very bad play atrociously acted, Nelson has a deaf ear for the way people talked in London, in 1945.

How do I know? Because I was there, and he wasn’t.

The playwright you see, is a 48-year-old American who lives in upstate New York.

But would I have thought any differently had I myself been an Anglo-Pakistani, raised in England in the early 1970s? I would like to think not – but, as we should always remember, in plays, as in life, memory’s baggage can weigh heavy.