I am happy to admit that I’ve had a few close calls with law enforcement officials on my travels and though I’ve always managed to get out of these sticky situations unscathed (more or less), I can easily recall the terror of these run-ins. One of my worst fears was ending up in a foreign jail. That awful place, a soft middle-class foreigner can only imagine as a hellish composite of movies like Return to Paradise and books like Marching Powder.
At first glance, this might seem like an odd premise for an offering at a comedy festival but that’s exactly where Billy Hayes’ story starts, with two kilograms of hashish being untaped from his body by police at the Istanbul airport. From there things only get worse for Billy. Sentenced to four years in a Turkish prison, rats, an archaic mental hospital and Richard Nixon to boot but throughout his ordeal he managed to maintain a certain optimism and even find the odd laugh.
Billy is a gifted story teller and doesn’t hold anything back when he talks about the effect of his imprisonment on his family or almost losing his mind in a hospital for the criminally insane. He credits Iyengar’s teachings on yoga for keeping him sane and it must have worked because his escape attempt would have required every bit of courage and guile he possessed.
It’s the kind of escape that could go horribly wrong at any moment. Minimally planned and plagued by constant danger, it defies belief that he lived to tell the tale but after hearing it, I’m very glad that he did. The story is tailor made for Hollywood and Oliver Stone himself made the film adaptation in 1978, but the film’s account of Billy’s escape has nothing on the real story. If you’ve already seen the movie, it’s worth hearing him tell the story himself because his positivity and ultimate redemption are notably absent from the film.
This is far from a laugh a minute show, in fact the laughs were fairly rare but it’s a fascinating story that held me from beginning to end and somehow still sent me out of the room with a smile on my face. They say that comedy is just tragedy plus time and by that measure Midnight Express deserves its place at this year’s comedy festival as much as any other show.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Riding the Midnight Express
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Kelvin Club
25 March – 12 April
Image Credit: www.comedyfestival.com.au
