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.

Tag Archives: Vitor Duarte

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: LOVE LETTER

★★★★★

Soho Theatre

CAMILLE O’SULLIVAN: LOVE LETTER

Soho Theatre

★★★★★

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