REVIEW: Mama Does Derby - Windmill Production Company, Brisbane Festival

Mama Does Derby

Produced by: Windmill Production Company

Presented by: Brisbane Festival

Venue: Brisbane Powerhouse

Date attended: 5 September 2026

Written by: Virginia Gay

Directed by: Clare Watson

Assistant Director & Choreographer: Larissa McGowan

Designer: Jonathon Oxlade

Lighting Designer: Lucy Birkinshaw

Sound Designer: Luke Smiles

Music Director, Guitar & Vocals: Joe Paradise Lui

Photography: Jade Ferguson / Visual Poets Society

“How’d I get so funny? Glad you asked. It’s the trauma.”

Billie freezes when life gets scary. Her mum runs from it. Meanwhile, everything else is on wheels!

Before Mama Does Derby has technically begun, roller skaters are already circling the Powerhouse Theatre. The crowd is rowdy, wheels rattle past our seats, and the usual polite pre-show murmur has been replaced by the atmosphere of a sporting event. By the end, we’re waving signs and pom-poms, cheering on an actual roller derby, and I think that all theatrical set changes should henceforth be performed on skates. I’ve never seen theatre quite like this.

Virginia Gay’s Mama Does Derby, directed by Clare Watson, centres on sixteen-year-old Billie (Elvy-Lee Quici) and her energetic mum Maxine (Anna Lindner). They’ve spent Billie’s childhood bouncing from town to town, collecting adventures and a history of questionable boyfriends. Maxine calls her daughter “kiddo”, they finish each other’s sentences, and their closeness has the rhythm of an Aussie Gilmore Girls... until Mum eventually straps on roller skates!

Even visually, they seem to occupy different worlds. Maxine’s bright hair and youthful styling match her restless energy, while Billie is comparatively muted and covered-up. In their new house, Maxine bounces around learning TikTok dances while Billie looks like her nervous system is shutting down. A session with school therapist Agatha (Annabel Matheson) puts a less cute name to their best-friend arrangement: parentification. Billie has grown accustomed to being Maxine’s confidante and companion, while Maxine would much rather turn therapy into a joke than consider what her daughter needs from her as a parent.

Lindner plays Maxine as a whirlwind of chatter, spontaneous dance moves, and goofy faces, using humour to dodge uncomfortable conversations. When Maxine cheerfully describes herself as “a flaky nightmare”, Lindner delivers the line as though it’s a perfectly reasonable personality trait. She’s well aware of her flaws and bad habits, but doing anything about them is another story...

Quici’s Billie is artistic, shy, awkward around her peers, and yearning for some stability. Virginia Gay’s writing captures one of the less glamorous sides of growing up: “I think being an adult means dissociation. So you can breathe, go to work...” Despite their closeness, mother and daughter have very different ways of coping when life gets difficult. Billie freezes; Maxine flees.

Billie’s anxiety brings insomnia and periods of paralysed muscular rigidity as the monster under her bed emerges (in fabulous footwear!). Benjamin Hancock plays Nathan, a glittering, long-legged nightmare in heelless stilettos, twisting and contorting his body into impossible positions. Creaks, groans, and Antoine Jelk’s demonic voice complete the creature. Hancock looms over Billie like something dragged out of sleep paralysis, then breaks the tension with a ridiculous movement or line. Nathan is genuinely creepy and one of the funniest characters onstage.

Billie eventually starts talking to him. She asks questions, gets closer, and learns that she can hear what her anxiety is saying without handing it control. I love that Nathan isn’t conveniently defeated either. The monster remains part of her psyche.

Maxine handles fear through motion. She talks non-stop, moves house, dates around, jokes, and dismisses uncomfortable thoughts before they can pin her down. Roller derby finally offers her somewhere to direct all that energy and, importantly, something she does purely for herself. She also befriends her fellow data-entry workers on wheels, the aptly dubbed “spinning wheels of death”.

This touring production incorporates members of Queensland’s actual derby community, including skaters connected to Queensland Roller Derby League, Brisbane City Rollers, Sun State Roller Derby, Northern Brisbane Rollers, and Team Indigenous Dreaming. They aren’t there simply to circle the stage looking cool (although they do!). Their speed, tricks, tight formations, and daring manoeuvres bring genuine roller derby skill into the theatre, with skaters flying around a performance space already crammed with actors, musicians, furniture, and moving scenery. And their names are awesome: Hexperiment 626, Bloody Laces, BB Gun, Scarebear, Ginger Snapz, Parks & Wreckage, Daisy Deathray are some listed in the program. Musical theatre performers need to lift their game when it comes to stage names!

Jonathon Oxlade’s stage design is incapable of sitting still. Maxine and Billie’s house is divided across wheeled platforms that assemble into a kitchen, dining area, living room, Billie’s bedroom, and (as I eventually realised) the dunny! The live band is actually in the bathroom. Skaters roll furniture and entire rooms into place, while bicycles, skateboards, and even a hearse join the traffic. Nothing stays put for long. The house is constantly being rearranged, much like the lives of the two people living in it.

The live band adds to the madness, bursting into musical scene changes with the energy of an unserious Hannah Montana transition. The lighting gets in on the fun too, with Halloween turning into a black-light rave, complete with the ghost of COVID past (there's a costume I hadn't considered). For Billie, it's also a rare chance to let loose and hang out with people her own age.

Aud Mason-Hyde’s sweet-natured Hux helps Billie find her feet socially, offering her a friendship outside Maxine’s orbit. Around Hux, Billie can relax a bit, without having to manage her mum or negotiate with demon Nathan. Oh and Hux sings Life is a Highway. I was not prepared for that killer voice and random musical moment!

Antoine Jelk also emerges from behind the drums into comic roles, including a driving instructor whose outrageous accent crosses Russia, Scotland, and Cockney London in the space of a single lesson. Annabel Matheson as Drew 'The Wombat' gets an enviable share of the best lines. Although I did love Billie’s line “This town is giving… bodies in a barrel.” Been there, baby.

All this comedy makes the uglier exchanges between mother and daughter hit so much harder. “You didn’t raise me at all!” cuts straight through the fun-mum fantasy. Quici lets Billie’s anger spill out messily, with all the volume and absolutism of a sixteen-year-old who’s been holding far too much in. She’s frustrated with Maxine, frightened by her own anxiety, hurt, and still desperately attached to her mum.

Lindner doesn't let Maxine's charisma excuse her behaviour either. Her chatter and impulsive enthusiasm are entertaining until she starts using those same habits to dodge what Billie is trying to tell her. And when Maxine snaps, “I have been held hostage by your mental health for too long!”, all the humour drains out of the room. Oof.

There are a lot of ideas spinning around this track: domestic violence, parentification, anxiety, therapy, adolescence, community, Nathan the demon... Billie’s mental health is handled with care and patience. Therapy begins as something Maxine mocks, yet Billie gradually acquires language for what her mind and body are doing. She doesn’t wake up cured. She learns to recognise her anxiety, question it, and decide how much authority it gets. Roller derby offers Maxine a more bruising version of the same lesson.

“I let everybody down..." "But you kept getting up.”

Mama Does Derby has a band in the bathroom, a hearse for a family car, a demon in stilettos, a mum who thinks she’s Sarah Connor, and skaters hurtling around the space. With all those wheels, they're finally finding their feet together.