This play was inspired by a true story. In the 1960s New Zealanders began cheering on a car thief-prison-escaper and inadvertantly promoted a small town kiwi boy from petty criminal to multi-prison escapee to National folk icon... A hero who ran rings around the police in his many bids for freedom.
Tim Balme, wrote Jimmy Costello to set the record straight about a man who started his career by stealing the milk money and ended up doing seventeen years, and to reveal the true personality at the centre of the phenomenon while introducing a host of Kiwi characters along the way: the bullshitter, the bushman's philosopher, the rogue and rookie, the honest cop, the stupid cop. The Ballad of Jimmy Costello is a "rollicking tiki tour of Kiwi kultcha" (The Dominion, NZ) and nearly every incident in this wild and witty adventure story is true.