It is telling that there were drama critics at the Apollo to review Camille O’Sullivan’s show, The Dark Angel. The half-French, half-Irish woman is ostensibly a singer, but so unique is her delivery that each song is a piece of theatre in its own right. My companion confessed to being just a little scared of O’Sullivan, who has a distinctive look - part vamp, part cabariste, but wholly diva. She described the singer, with her raven hair and a gash of bright-red lipstick, as “a cross between Tracey Emin and Judy Garland”, but soon warmed to her. But then O’Sullivan is a pussy cat, as evidenced by her slinky movement about the stage and exhortations of the audience to miaow (“my favourite sound”) at her.
She has an Irish eccentricity that most warm to, but some may not, and if you want your songs done straight, O’Sullivan is not for you. She performs on stage with cocktail frocks hanging from the flies and candles burning in jars at the footlights; the stage design is hers. She qualified in Dublin as an architect and it was only through the university drama club that she fund her true calling, but she puts her artistic eye to good use at the Apollo - we are drawn into a slightly weird world of her creation.
O’Sullivan possesses a voice, sometimes sultry, sometimes ringingly clear, that is an instrument in itself and she has been described as the best interpreter of others’ songs working today; she sings everything from Jacques Brel to David Bowie, and many others in between. Many of the songs are - in the nicest possible way - unrecognisable the way she performs them, such is her highly individual style. The evening, she told us, would be about storytelling and the characters in the songs, and in her interpretations one certainly heard them anew.
She started with two Brel numbers, “My Death” and “The Bulls”, given rocky, upbeat treatment by her superb five-piece backing band, led by musical director Feargal Murray on keyboards. Displaying a skill she learned when she performed with burlesque group Le Clique, O’Sullivan started taking off various layers of clothing - but it’s all done in the best possible taste, all part of the performance.
She really does perform rather than just sing; on Nick Cave’s “Little Water Song" she became the woman who has been drowned by her lover, hands raised above her head, simulating the surrounding water, her reproachful tones giving the song even more impact. Likewise, she vamped it up to great comedic effect for Kirsty McColl’s “In These Shoes”.
Two songs - Tom Waits’s “All the World is Green” and Dillie Keane’s “Look Mummy, No Hands” - are moving enough at any time, but here were given heartbreaking renditions. The former, a paean of love from a man to his wife, had a jazzy riff, and the latter - a mother-daughter story about the regret of not appreciating loved ones when they are alive - was performed with just a piano accompaniment and was quite breathtakingly beautiful.
She finished with a fantastically rocking version of David Bowie’s “Five Years”, an a cappella account of Brel’s “Marieke” and Cave’s wonderful love-laden “Ship Song”. O’Sullivan said at one point, “We’ll assault you in the nicest way possible”, but no offence taken here - just appreciation of a fabulous singer on superb form.
Camille O’Sullivan is at the Apollo until 16 January 2010. Book here
