DCT show ‘Riding the Midnight Express’ is riveting

What do you do if you’ve got four and a half pounds of hashish taped to your body and you’re at the Istanbul airport about to board a plane when soldiers announce they’re pat-searching everyone to check for bombs?

Fortunately, you won’t have to find out the hard way. Billy Hayes already did, and he’s in town for two more weeks to share all the harrowing, heartbreaking and surprisingly uplifting details in his one-man show at Downstairs Cabaret Theatre, Riding the Midnight Express.

Yes, you may have seen the 1978 Academy Award-winning movie Midnight Express, based on the book Hayes wrote about his ordeal. And yes, if you did, there’s still good reason to see this show. The movie messes with the real story in all the worst ways, and the usually unapologetic Oliver Stone even expressed regret years later about what he got wrong (especially the one-dimensional portraits of Turks as bad guys in the movie, which is not how Hayes described them in his book).

What makes this show so worthwhile is that it uses the edge-of-your-seat storyline as something deeper: a personal exploration. It’s an action-adventure tale wrapped around a soulful odyssey of trying to become a better person.

Our guide is the now graying and wiser Hayes, who was 23 when he found himself staring down that airport pat-down. He had wanted to be a writer, and the program notes say he had been inspired by Timothy Leary to turn on, tune in and drop out — only Hayes also dropped into travel abroad laced with the occasional drug-smuggling stint.

We’re lucky he’s a writer. His eloquence and eye for detail puts the audience right there with him, even in a place we’d never go. As a natural storyteller, he squeezes suspense, poetry and humor out of every step through prison life and his unlikely escape plan. Quit simply, he’s riveting.

And insightful. He speaks of the ultimate conundrum of day-to-day prison life: You’re always lonely, but you’re never alone. For a time, he finds solace in the little patch of grass — life! — in the prison yard, until they cement it over. He recalls the sounds of morning prayers spilling out from the minarets and connecting him to the world, and when he chants them for us, we feel the desperate yearning of a trapped soul.

A fellow inmate helps him focus on living in the moment instead of dreading the years ahead, and Hayes saves himself through an unlikely activity: yoga.

Here is where the story starts to come together. Hayes looks every bit the hippie-turned-yoga instructor, with his lithe physique and radiant expression, even as he derides Nixon for making an example of him in the president’s newly announced war on drugs. On the brink of completing his sentence, Hayes sees his case reassessed — to life in prison. That’s when the action-adventure kicks back in, as Hayes plots to escape (“ride the midnight express” in prison slang). As suspense goes, it’s first-rate storytelling.

This is not a meditation on the morality of crime and punishment, and anyone looking for a debate on the issue of illegal drugs will be disappointed. The story is Hayes’ own, about him, not a cause or a controversy.

And we have to take him at his word with the telling of it, even in occasional spots that feel a bit embellished for effect (the repeated offer of hashish wherever he goes, for example). Then again, Hayes doesn’t try to make himself look good; he elaborates on the ways he hurt others, not just himself, so you believe in him. And his presentation is energetic, never wallowing or depressing. This is how he charms (vital for a storytelling show): He takes us into his confidence and lays himself bare without seeking pity.

A question-and-answer session follows each performance. In the one I attended, Hayes spoke of the programs he’s now involved with to teach yoga in prisons as a way to help prisoners cope. If there are lessons for us to learn from his show — about appreciating what we have and living in the moment — there’s also the reminder that the possibility of redemption is wrapped into every bad decision a person can make. Some of us just have to spend harder time to find it.

If you go

What:Riding the Midnight Express, a one-man show by Billy Hayes, based on his best-selling book about living in and trying to escape from a Turkish prison.

When: Thursdays to Sundays through Feb. 8 (but no performance Feb. 1).

Where: Downstairs Cabaret Theatre, 20 Windsor St., Rochester.

Tickets: $26 to $29; senior and student discounts available.

For more: Call (585) 325-4370 or visit downstairscabaret.com.