It goes without saying creating new work is always a gamble. When it’s staged as part of a major festival the stakes are even higher. The show has to compete with much more seasoned fare. Odious comparisons may be made and a strong idea may never get to have a second chance.

That fate has been avoided for Clare Watson and Virginia Gay’s Mama Does Derby, made for Adelaide company Windmill. It had its first outing at this year’s Sydney Festival in January to a mixed response but now, a little tweaked, is part of the Adelaide Festival (from now until March 8). Brisbane Festival is also a co-producer so it’s likely there will be a third life later this year and more opportunity to refine the show. 

The original venue, Sydney Town Hall, wasn’t ideal acoustically and some parts of the show flagged but Watson and Gay have had the opportunity to tinker a little to tighten the show for the Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre. I’m told it will also sound better there.

Mama Does Derby also appears to be targeted more directly to a family audience in Adelaide than was the case in Sydney, and with ticket prices to match. Windmill is a local company specialising in “original work for young audiences and families” so expectations will be different. That can make a huge difference to how a show is received. Brisbane should take note.

Mama Does Derby is worth the work.

Roller derby as a metaphor for life? Why not? The sport is fast-paced, chaotic, rough as hell. It has spills and thrills. The only way forward is around and around. People get hurt and bounce back. Or not.

Roller derby, however, has helmets and pads to mitigate pain. Daily existence not so much.

Central to Mama Does Derby is a topsy-turvy mother-daughter relationship. Maxine (Amber McMahon) is a rock chick zooming towards middle age whose approach to parenting is loving but loose.

Billie (Elvy-Lee Quici), about to turn 16 and riddled with insecurity, feels she needs to protect Max. 

The two have landed in yet another new town and both are floundering.

In different ways the local roller derby team will save them, not with “Starlight Expressbullshit” but with uncomplicated comradeship and honest sweat.

Watson, the director, writes in the program that the roller derby ethos is and has always been “daggy and endearing”. How Australian is that? Heaven.

In Sydney it was clear, however, that Mama Does Derby needed more drafts and a heavier foot on the accelerator. A show inspired by the world of roller derby had to be shorter, faster and tighter. The derby action needed to be better integrated into the action and to look less tame. 

But the bones were and are there. Mama Does Derby gets the look spot on. Jonathan Oxlade’s witty, grungy design puts the skeleton of a home, or bits of it, within a race track. Rooms are trucked on and off, appropriately pushed into place by roller derby exponents, in Adelaide’s case members of the Adelaide Roller Derby League. 

The lo-fi visual theatricality comes up a treat. Billie’s demons are made visible in the slinky, sequinned form of Benjamin Hancock, a dancer of unfeasible elasticity, and a three-piece punk-rock band inserts itself noisily into the fray. 

In Sydney the mighty roller derby crew radiated megawatts of good health and good cheer and no doubt their Adelaide counterparts will be as effective. The invaluable McMahon proved herself handy on a pair of skates and Adelaide sees her with that experience under the belt. There’s was a fine performance from Aud Mason-Hyde as Billie’s grounded friend Hux (they are also appearing in Adelaide).

The downside in Sydney, and it was a big one, was that more personal moments – the heart of the drama – struggled to assert themselves. The story’s various strands didn’t find equilibrium. 

Max and Billie, learning very different life lessons in different ways, have to connect as mother and daughter and did so in an over-hasty denouement.

Watson, who is artistic director of Windmill, and Gay, a polymath theatre whizz and writer, wear their hearts on their sleeves with Mama Does Derby. It’s clear they are moved – as am I – by roller derby’s insistence on inclusivity and the community’s power to embrace and heal. 

They are on to something fresh with Mama Does Derby.