Franco-Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan brings the works of Brel, Bowie, Waits and Cave into the ‘here and now’, she tells Simon Chan.
With a style that is dark but strangely fun, international cabaret star Camille O’Sullivan has earned sell-out shows and rave reviews from New York to Brighton to Edinburgh and Sydney, and in the process won a swag of international awards. Now she’s playing Brisbane with her show, La Fille Du Cirque (Girls of the Circus), on February 27.
Though she’s also an award-winning architect, Camille’s cabaret career has taken centre stage in her life.
“I don’t have any time to design houses any more,” she laughs, “I had to give that up in 2000. I was known as the singing architect when I was at college, but gradually this just took over,” she says in a lilting Irish brogue.
“I had my big break when Ewan Bremner (Spud from the movie Trainspotting) saw me performing at the Famous Spiegeltent, and recommended me for a lead part in Mrs Henderson Presents.
“You know, I’ve watched it twice and I can hardly believe it’s me on screen, singing there with Will Young. The part was between me and Natalie Imbruglia. Lucky I got it, or I wouldn’t have got to work with Judi Dench.”
I ask whether she thought there was a connection between music and architecture.
“I approached design was the same as constructing my shows – you’re looking for contrast, and a relationship between light and dark – perhaps a fluid variation. When I’m walking through a building, I’m a very emotional person, and I know this sounds like rubbish, but the feeling of a building as you walk through it is the same for me as the feeling of a show as it goes on.”
So if Nick Cave was a building, what sort would he be? “Oh, he’d be a church,” she says without hesitation, “a very beautiful and unique church. Probably 100 or 200 years old.”
And Jacques Brel, Waits, and Bowie? She takes some time to answer.
“If we’re talking churches, Cave would be this small sort of weird church in the middle of nowhere, but Brel would be this gothic kind of cathedral, like Notre Dame. Tom Waits wouldn’t be a building, he’s more a circus fairground. And Bowie’s a hard one, probably something futuristic in space. He’s got too much going on, I can’t describe him – he changes every decade.”
O’Sullivan has chosen these particular artists to interpret on stage in La Fille, as they appear to her the modern descendents of traditional German and French cabaret, but with contemporary targets. However, she views cabaret’s main concerns – sex, money, politics and death – as being eternal.
With her many awards and understanding of the genre, it’s surprising to learn that she isn’t actually trained as a singer. “My voice can sound lovely, but it’s more like an actress doing the songs. It’s not just about singing well, or just pleasing an audience, but bringing a certain theatrical interpretation to the piece, placing it in the show, and bringing something new to it. It’s about storytelling, and making the song relevant to here and now.”
Without prompting, O’Sullivan returns to our architectural metaphor. “Sometimes it’s fun, but sometimes it questions where you are in life. It’s about light and dark. I’m not a religious person, but every city I go to, I visit a church and go watch something there.”
Now I see her in Brisbane, sitting quietly in a pew at St Stephen’s, building the next show in her mind.
Camille O’Sullivan plays the Powerhouse Theatre on Wednesday February 27.
Franco-Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan brings the works of Brel, Bowie, Waits and Cave into the ‘here and now’, she tells Simon Chan. 
