THEATRE PREVIEW

NOVEMBER 2025 | Volume 257

 

The first university drama course I took used an anthology containing two of the most downbeat plays I’ve ever read or seen: Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths and Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. I haven’t thought of that play collection since, until seeing Blue iRadio’s production of In Arabia We’d All Be Kings.

I first saw playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis’ work a decade ago when his play The Motherfucker with the Hat was performed here. I described that play in my review as “dramatizing some days in the lives of a quartet of New York City addicts living one step (or drink or snort) away from utter disaster.” In Arabia might be seen as a companion piece, so be prepared.

Set in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen sometime in the late 1990s, In Arabia casts a somewhat wider net but its inhabitants occupy a similar lowest depth: they’re alcoholics and addicts, hookers, petty drug dealers, and losers of every stripe. For most, there seems to be no deeper bottom for them to hit. Sad characters all, they nevertheless manage to generate some sympathy, and even at moments a modicum of charm, for their pathetic attempts to fake it, maintain a little status. They don’t have much to work with but they do what they can.

Lenny (Hellal Jawhari), just out of prison, talks a lot of bluff, and his tough sometime girlfriend Daisy (Tirion Jones) calls it. At least he tries to get a job. Junkie and petty dealer Skank (Chris Cope) is about the only one impressed by Lenny. His girlfriend Chickie (Isabelle Madrigal) is a crack addict who turns tricks. She also spends time with Charlie (Lee Tichon) who tends the bar where they all hang out. Charlie fantasizes about being a Jedi. Bar owner Jake (Michael Vairo) has Daisy as a side dish and talks about taking her to Florida. Sure.

The ballsiest character, Greer (Ken Godmere), is a gay predator who sexually humiliates Skank. Mother-daughter Miss Reyes (Andrea Echeverria Diaz) and skanky 17-year-old single mom Demaris (Mimi Toma) are both outrageous. Demaris pulls a gun on her mom in one scene.

In nearly every scene sits Sammy (Michael Fera), drunk and semi-conscious at a barroom table. He’s the emblem of all these characters, what they’ll grow up to be—if they live long enough and grow up at all. Sammy mumbles the title line, a symbol of the false vanity that drives them, and their alienation from any kind of reality.

Under Emilio Salituro’s direction all the actors do a credible job, even supplying pretty good New York accents. Godmere is a standout as the repulsive Greer (a homophobic portrait that no writer could get away with today), and I really liked Jones’ feisty Daisy.

The strongest scene involves Madrigal’s Chickie giving Toma’s Demaris a lesson in attracting johns. The actresses imbue both young women with so much awkward vitality, all so painfully, grotesquely misplaced. At one point Chickee asks Demaris, “You smoke crack?” “No,” she answers. “But don’t tell no one.” In their twisted world that’s the kind of thing that should embarrass you.

 

 

get in touch with vancouverplays:

EMAIL US

SUBMIT LISTINGS

 SUBMIT PREVIEW

 ADVERTISE WITH US