SameSame.com.au ~ Inside Out Australia

Red Hot Rhonda!

Feature, By hazyinseptember, 23rd November, 2009

Rhonda Burchmore is stunning! Even at “her age” (as she puts it). She still has that girlish charm, beautiful smile, quick wit and those killer legs that earned her a place in the heart of mainstream Australian television during the nineties.

“What publication are you boys from?” she asks, and when I tell her it’s gay and lesbian she laughs with delight, “Oh baby, you are some of my best buddies!”

When it comes to the Australian collective consciousness, Rhonda Burchmore is best known for her appearances on Hey Hey It’s Saturday. A popular regular on the Celebrity Head segment, in reality it showed very little of her many talents. Rhonda groans when I mention the show.

“All those years ago! The popularity of it was just phenomenal. I was just a personality with red hair and legs… it was still a blast though. It’s sad to see the death of variety television, with the last nail in the coffin being the end of Rove. It’s really depressing as there are no longer any launch pads for young people. You knew if you got on Hey, Hey you would be charting next week. You’d get Molly behind you and…” Rhonda giggles as she realises what she had said, “Well, the rest is history!”

Plucked from obscurity 27 years ago, Rhonda honed her art on television variety shows with the likes of Bert Newton, Mike Walsh and Don Lane. With no auditions, there was only on-air time to show what you could do.

“Back then it was all live to air television. If you blew it, you blew it big!” says Rhonda. “I had a singing teacher who put their reputation on the line to give me a go. So I did my first Don Lane show, and it went out to millions of people across Australia. From that you get booked to do the next one, but if you’re crap that’s it!”

After variety television came a role in the cult movie flop The Pirate Movie. Very loosely based on the musical Pirates of Penzance, with a mixture of Gilbert & Sullivan music and 80’s pop songs, it starred the likes of Kristy McNicol, Christopher Atkins, and of course, Rhonda Burchmore who played the lovely Kate. Although the movie was a box office bomb, the songs and scenes have etched themselves into the psyche of 30 somethings across the globe.

“That movie was so bad,” she grimaces, “but it was exposure… I had not done any more film since then, and it’s not a result from that movie, it’s because I’ve been doing lots of other things.”

And lots of other things is no understatement: singing and dining with Bill Clinton; performing her own smash stage show Red, Hot And Rhonda; receiving critical acclaim for her Victorian opera performances, recording her own albums, appearing on mainstream television, as well as appearing in a plethora of sell out stage shows and musicals here and internationally, including Mamma Mia and Annie Get Your Gun, it’s no wonder that her film career had to sit on the backburner. Until now.

Kin, her first film role since The Pirate Movie is a black comedy due in cinemas early 2010. Directed by Melbourne Indie film maker Amanda Jane, it sees Rhonda playing a melancholy mistress ‘Cheryl’ looking for affection and love, a very different and challenging role. “It was very different and left of centre!” said Rhonda. “It’s going to Sundance and opening the Melbourne Film Festival.”

Looking back over 2009, Rhonda describes it as ‘funny’. “I’ve been doing things that are not as typical for me. The first scene we shot was me in the sack with actor Steve Bisley. I’m so private with that kind of stuff, and when I first read the script I was like ‘There is no way I could do that!’ It was my first ever love scene and the first day of work, not even a ‘hello, lets go grab a coffee!’”

Another of this year’s challenges was the Australian production of Eurobeat, the massively successful English stage show, based on the beloved Eurovision song contest. Featuring musical acts based on various Eurovision entries, theatre goers are encouraged to vote on their favourite country by mobile phone.

“It’s a very different premise for a musical,” explains Rhonda, “as it’s an extraordinary night’s entertainment with audience participation. I play Boyka the Bosnian hostess, I have to speak in this Bosnian accent and in French as well! We have a very short rehearsal time, and with the audience voting, the show will be different every night… it should be a blast!

“Because of the way the show is laid out, it’s influenced by an amazing array of costume changes. At one point I’m dressed as a turnip singing ‘I’m Sarajavo, taste me’! You’ll get to see a selection of Rhonda Burchmore original dresses.” Rhonda smiles at me with her gleam in her eyes, “Men, women, drag queens… they’ll all be wetting their pants when they see some of these extraordinary frocks!”

Check out a clip from the London performance of Eurobeat:

Eurobeat runs from the 25th of November to the 5th of December at QPAC in Brisbane. For your chance to win tickets click here. For more information visit the QPAC Eurobeat web page. Kin will be in cinemas early 2010.