★★★★

“performances that are magnetic and unsettling”

Don’t let the short running time fool you. Private View is a rich, emotionally and intellectually rewarding play. Jess Edwards charts a Sapphic relationship from the first flicker of attraction into far more complicated territory where differences in age, experience, wealth and status continually reshape the balance of power. It is clever, unsettling writing that refuses simple answers. Annie Kershaw’s lean, precise direction heightens the tension and keeps the momentum taut. The two women are never named; in the programme they appear simply as A and B.

A, played by Patricia Allison, is 23, a PhD student in physics and philosophy. B describes her as “luminous” when they first meet and the production leans into that with bright, tight-fitting fast-fashion pieces that amplify her freshness and immediacy. Allison’s performance, though, gives A something deeper. She is quick, curious and immediately engaging. Her speech fizzes with youthful energy, full of unfinished thoughts, yet when she talks about her research it becomes crisp, focused and passionate. Edwards’ writing creates a deliberate tension between her scientific confidence and her emotional newness, particularly as she experiences queer desire for the first time. Her youth and beauty give her fleeting leverage, even a sharpness that borders on cruelty, but she remains vulnerable beneath it.

B, played by Stefanie Martini, is 38 and an established photographer whose work sells for high prices. Martini’s early scenes give her a composed, articulate confidence, someone used to being the older and steadier presence. The costuming reinforces this with well-chosen natural fibres and subtle luxury, the kind of quietly expensive wardrobe that signals success without drawing attention to itself. As the play unfolds, cracks appear: the history of alcoholism, past failures and a hungry obsessiveness toward A that becomes harder to disguise. Edwards gives B advantages in age, experience and money and Martini reinforces these through precise gestures and controlled posture, although a nervous need to be liked and wanted keeps breaking through. But that authority is never fixed. It flickers, unravels, reforms. The shifting power between A and B becomes one of Private View’s sharpest tools and both actors handle those turns with nuance.

The play traces their relationship with close and often uncomfortable detail. Desire intensifies, old wounds rise to the surface and what begins with seductive ease becomes something far more tangled. Their flirtation with dominance and submission adds heat in the bedroom but also destabilises everything outside it. Differences in class, age and emotional history complicate every moment, making their connection alluring one second and unnerving the next. Edwards keeps the question of control open which is precisely what gives the piece its bite.

Allison and Martini rise to the show’s demands with performances that are magnetic and unsettling. Allison’s openness makes A instantly appealing while Martini’s measured exterior hides something sharper and more volatile. Their chemistry is charged, unpredictable and occasionally difficult to watch.

Kershaw’s direction keeps the atmosphere tightly coiled without ever overplaying it. Ingrid Mackinnon’s movement and intimacy work gives weight to the smallest shifts in breath, posture and space. Catja Hamilton’s lighting moves between warmth and stark clarity, including a striking sequence in near darkness that recalls B’s photographic practice. Georgia Wilmot’s sparse set and carefully considered costume design reinforce the piece’s study of difference, desire and instability. Scene changes, achieved through shifts in body language, posture and lighting, carry a dry wit that keeps the pace alive.

By the end, the initial thrill between A and B has thickened into something claustrophobic. Private View shows with unsettling precision how desire, power and coercion can twist together until they are impossible to separate. Intelligent, stylish and quietly disturbing, it is a compelling study of a relationship folding in on itself and leaving little room to breathe.

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: LOVE LETTER

Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“A truly magical, intense, joyful and passionate theatrical experience”

A bell tolls. Piano notes fall through the air, rolling down in minor scales scale, like soft rain on the streets of Soho, until they collect into pools of diminished chords. From the shadows, Camille O’Sullivan’s voice cracks, splitting the night with a raw beauty. “There’ll be whisky on Sunday and tears on their cheeks”. Half whispering, half screaming, she transports us to County Clare with Shane MacGowan’s ‘The Broad Majestic Shannon’. O’Sullivan is dressed in black, not quite in mourning but ragged, in ripped stockings and a shredded falsetto. It’s not a eulogy. She is pouring her heart into a love letter, written in song, to lost love. To lost lives. Particularly two of her close friends; Shane MacGowan and Sinéad O’Connor.

MacGowan’s poetic lyricism, in particular, forms the backbone of the evening. Stripped of the backbeat of the Pogues, the songs resound like hymns. “I want to be haunted by the ghost of your precious love”. When O’Connor and MacGowan sang this duet, it was a four-minute slice of upbeat pop melancholia, but when O’Sullivan spits out the words, we swallow them whole with the quiet force of their meaning. The evening is not just about the music, but about the words. And despite initial appearances, it is a celebration and, in her inimitable style, she also draws from her catalogue of favourites, including Tom Waits, Jacques Brel, Nick Cave and David Bowie. In between the songs, her mind flutters like a moth looking for the light. Her thoughts and recollections are fuelled by chaotic humour. She has definitely kissed the Blarney Stone, as she herself can barely keep up with the banter. But there’s always a point to which she is meandering and when she reaches it, we are jolted back onto her merry-go-round and into another beautiful song.

Camille doesn’t perform covers. She reinvents them. Reshapes them and turns them into a story. The prosaic original of Tom Waits’ ‘Martha’ is now a heart-rending ballad. Jacques Brel’s ‘Amsterdam’ is sung a Capella, accompanied only by a burning red light. O’Sullivan is a sorceress and enchantress. A banshee and a siren. Fierce and fragile. Feral – yet a glint in her eyes tells us that she seems to know what she is doing. But even if she appears a touch unsure at times, we know that she stands alone in interpreting other people’s songs like nobody else. Her voice catches, reluctant to leave her throat, but then escapes in either a rasp or a tender cry. Nick Cave’s ‘Jubilee Street’ and Kirsty MacColl’s ‘In These Shoes?’ have a raucous power, bordering on messiness. But within seconds we are plunged into Sinéad O’Conner’s gorgeously aching ‘My Darling Child’.

As she traces the whisp-like thread between the present and the afterlife, sadness and joy, mortality and timelessness, Feargal Murray is on hand to anchor her, following her with his accomplished and sensitive piano playing. From the music box chimes of Dillie Keane’s ‘Look Mummy, No Hands’, to a virtuosic accompaniment that propels the highlight of the evening: a searing medley of David Bowie’s finest. Camille cries and dances and sings all at once. ‘Blackstar’ gives way to ‘Where Are We Now?’. Despite segueing into ‘Quicksand’, the song, instead of sinking, builds and builds beyond expectation, Murray’s piano chords crashing like waves against the ragged rocks of O’Sullivan’s exposed and abraded vocals. The emotion is unmistakable.

Another pause, and we are drawn again into the bric-a-brac clutter of her thoughts, reflected by the stage setting. A cat’s head and a dog’s head watch from their mannequin bodies. A rabbit shaped lamp sits on a side table. Camille slips on a red dress – a barometer to the rising passion of her performance. She recites Shane MacGowan’s poetry. It is ‘A Rainy Night in Soho’, but soon we are walking the streets of Dublin through MacGowan’s words, inextricably linked to James Joyce. “One by one we are all becoming shades”. Camille O’Sullivan encapsulates all the shades of the human heart in her performance. A brief detour via Nick Cave’s ‘Ship Song’ (a staple of her set list) brings us to the plaintive finale. “And then he sang a song, the ‘Rare Old Mountain Dew’, I turned my face away, and dreamed about you”. ‘Fairytale of New York’ is MacGowan’s most overplayed composition. Camille O’Sullivan delivers it as though we are hearing it for the first time. Stripped back and bare, its tempo practically flatlining, there is a powerful calm. Never have smiles and tears been so beautifully merged. And thus she signs off her love letter. A truly magical, intense, joyful and passionate theatrical experience. She may appear to be perpetually close to the edge… but we are on the edge of our seats throughout.

PRIVATE VIEW

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“performances that are magnetic and unsettling”

PRIVATE VIEW

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 2nd December 2025

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography by Ciara Robinson

Previously reviewed at Soho Theatre venues:

PRIVATE VIEW

PRIVATE VIEW

PRIVATE VIEW

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: LOVE LETTER

Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“A truly magical, intense, joyful and passionate theatrical experience”

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: LOVE LETTER

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 26th November 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Vitor Duarte

Previously reviewed at this venue:

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN

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