For years, Camille O’Sullivan has avoided the 9-to-5 lifestyle, but lately, she admits, she has enjoyed commuting. Only two weeks ago, the Irish singer would start each working day by taking in panoramic views of Sydney from her apartment in the idyllic suburb of Lavender Bay, before catching a ferry across the famous harbour to her destination. As the boat moored underneath the Australian city’s greatest landmark, O’ Sullivan would think all the effort had been worthwhile: here she was, an Irish singer of ostensibly cult appeal, arriving to perform at Sydney Opera House.
“I just thought, ‘This is heaven, I’m going to die happy’,” O’Sullivan says. “The whole experience, you had to pinch yourself, because I could never have dreamed something like this could happen back when I was in Bewley’s. You also feel the weight of the history and power of the opera house on your shoulders when you’re there, you can’t help it. But you just have to click out of it and go, ‘It’s just like any other gig.’ I suppose you should always push yourself as a performer, to see how far you can go.
“Until 2004, I was really just travelling around Ireland all the time, and if I’d stayed here, I couldn’t have toured or had this kind of career. If you’re scared of something, that’s usually what you should go towards.”
Any fears O’Sullivan may have had are long gone. Fresh off the plane from Australia, she is buoyed by the memory of her five-night run in the opera house’s studio space. It is quite an achievement for a self-managed cabaret artist to sustain eight months on the road, organising different bands in each location. Yet from Canada to Australia to New York, O’Sullivan has done just that, dividing her time between stints on touring alternative variety shows and her own full-length performances.
Equally impressive has been the stylistic path that has taken O’Sullivan around the globe. Though garbed in the stereotypical cabaret uniform of fishnets and bright red lipstick, O’Sullivan’s repertoire is a far cry from the tasteful jazz standards of most chanteuses. While O’Sullivan’s unabashedly dramatic take on songs such as Nick Cave’s The Mercy Seat and Jacques Brel’s Next may not be to everyone’s taste, they have established her distinctive appeal.
“I feel it’s necessary to not just do things to please,” she says. “I sometimes worried about that in the past. I thought, ‘If I don’t want to alienate people, I shouldn’t perform’. But I would have given up if I’d stayed doing Dietrich and Piaf in a studied way, that cafe-cabaret version, where you’re making it easy instead of pushing yourself.”
For all her bohemian trappings, O’Sullivan’s key characteristic may be her personal drive: her continuing career is testament to a determination that rivals the most ambitious pop-star wannabe. Certainly, she has made financial sacrifices to pursue her singular path. A qualified architect, she found her instinct for professional stability winning out for years over the creative urges, which first saw her sing on stage in the early 1990s. It took a serious car crash, in 1999, for O’Sullivan to follow her muse.
“The accident was the thing that catapulted me to get up and do the things in my life,” O’Sullivan says. “I was always scared to do performance (full-time) before that, I would always put it off. When I had the accident, I was a year out from everything, learning how to walk and do the basic things. I couldn’t give a damn whether I could do architecture or not, because at that stage you’re happy to smell the flowers. And that was the moment I realised, ‘Jesus, what am I wasting my time for?’ Even if I am scared of going up in front of people, even if I do fall on my face, I thought, ‘I’m going to have to do it now. Because I only have this one life and it could have all ended then.’”
It seems surprising that it took such a traumatic event for O’Sullivan to commit herself to singing full-time. Growing up in Cork, the daughter of an English-born former racing driver and a French mother, O’Sullivan and her sister spent their childhoods steeped in artistic activities, from ballet to piano lessons.
“But I never thought I’d be a singer. I wanted to be an actress or a painter, that was my thing. So I did painting for a year, but then I got scared to go any further, because I thought if I study any more that might kill my love for it. So I went and did architecture, and that was hard to leave.”
An active member of Dramsoc at University College Dublin, O’Sullivan’s artistic tendencies remained strong enough to spur her sideways move into singing. Inspired by the performance clubs she frequented while living in Berlin and the old songs she knew through her mother’s record collection, O’Sullivan took the plunge into cabaret, landing a part in the show Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.
“That was a turning point, in 1994, in Andrews Lane (theatre). I was coming back and forth from Berlin, with a year out from architecture, but it was the most extraordinary summer of my life. When I sang Brel’s stuff I thought I could spend the rest of my life singing this type of music.
I was still caught: I knew how I became an architect, but I wondered, ‘How the hell did I end up standing on this stage?’ I knew had to do something.”
So began the uneasy balancing act, resolved only after her accident. But even after that, O’Sullivan found herself doubting the wisdom of pursuing her vocation.
“I used to feel uneasy with being a singer who sang other people’s stuff. In Ireland especially, where everyone was a singer-songwriter, I thought I should be writing my own material. I had a real problem with that for a while, but then I thought, ‘That’s really ridiculous, because Frank Sinatra, Mary Coughlan, Ella Fitzgerald, they’ve all been interpreting for years’. Now, in the show, I’ve got an obsession with those songs and that’s why I go out to do them.”
Since then O’Sullivan’s lack of inhibition on stage has been her most striking asset, getting her noticed during the 2004 Edinburgh performances that brought her to a wider international audience.
Her combination of vampish performance and raw singing doesn’t always work — one might cringe as she removes the cork from a wine bottle with her teeth. But, O’Sullivan says, the emotional release that she enjoys on stage helps fuel her drive.
“When you’re doing it every day it can be a bit exhausting, but I need it,” she says. “I am not that kind of person offstage — I’m very reserved. It’s like most actors, it’s an excuse to be able to liberate yourself and liberate any reserve — and I have plenty of that. So I can see why I’m doing it.”
For all that, O’Sullivan does not want to confine herself to cabaret. Indeed, one of her highlights is an appearance alongside Judi Dench in Stephen Frears’s saucy burlesque film Mrs Henderson Presents, released last year, in which she portrayed a sultry singer.
“I’d love to do some more acting like that, because it brings out another aspect of you,” she adds. “When you’re organising your own gigs, you don’t really push yourself further.”
The recent Australian release of a live CD and DVD recording of her show, La Fille du Cirque, seems set to keep her in the public eye Down Under. And as long there is a stage for her to sing on, one suspects that O’Sullivan will be busy commuting.
“Even if you’re playing wonderful places such as Sydney Opera House, you’ll always be that performer out there by herself, like you were when you started all those years ago,” she reflects.
“It’s like you’re constantly challenging yourself, and you think, ‘If I stay at this another five years, I’ll be different again’. So you just keep going.”
Camille O’Sullivan performs at the Olympia, Dublin, on Dec 8. Her album, A Little Yearning, is out now — check www.camilleosullivan.com for details
