In Arabia We'd All Be Kings is a dramatic stageplay that takes place in 1990s New York City, written by Stephen Adly Guirgis and directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in 1999.[1] It chronicles the demise of a group of individuals living in New York's Hell's Kitchen around the time of Rudy Giuliani's efforts to clean up the city. Out of work and strapped for money, the lives of these individuals revolve around a local bar and their misguided hopes and dreams.
The play deals primarily with issues of commercialism, hope, and friendship. The New York Times wrote: "Zoot-suited craps players have been replaced by junkies in dirty T-shirts who will do anything for drug money, and the Salvation Army evangelists are now religious nuts who carve up the prostitutes rather than preach to them."[2] Variety wrote of a 2007 performance: the play "underscores the tragic truth that the human psyche yearns for stability and will eventually accept any remnant of it that can be found."[3]