Take a touch of Joyce, a soupçon of Piaf, a dash of Shane MacGowan and a whisper of Scott Walker, shake it all up with a tumbler of Jameson’s – and you still fall short of capturing the phenomenon that is Camille O’Sullivan. The Irish singer-performer has returned to the Soho Theatre with Loveletter, a show that gestures affectionately towards the world at large but is aimed most squarely at two absent friends: MacGowan and Sinéad O’Connor.

O’Sullivan makes her entrance from the back of the stalls, gliding down the aisle like a mischievous spectre, brushing the shoulders and hair of those seated by the gangways. Cloaked in black, she dives straight into Summer in Siam, MacGowan’s woozy Pogues ballad. The stage she steps onto looks as though it has been curated by a magpie with a fever: mannequins topped with a cat’s face and a poodle’s head, plastic rabbits, possibly a stuffed Bagpuss (it’s a very dark stage), neon signs, and the sort of paraphernalia one might find in an attic curated by a surrealist. Over the course of the evening it becomes clear that we are, in fact, roaming through the landscape of O’Sullivan’s own chaotic, captivating imagination.

At her side sits musical collaborator Feargal Murray, alternately at the keyboard, trumpet, or behind a laptop cueing the occasional full band track. He provides harmonies, support and, at moments, a kind of gentle tethering to O’Sullivan’s mercurial flights.

Once the cloak is shed, her costume appears to have been plucked from the world’s most eccentric charity shop: a black top, sequined skirt, tights so laddered they seem to be in existential collapse, and boots giving up the ghost. Later she dons a shimmering red dress, catching the spinning disco-ball light like a cabaret siren.

Across a sprawling ninety minutes – she begins late and then overruns with the insouciance of someone for whom clocks are advisory – O’Sullivan delivers roughly fourteen songs drawn from Tom Waits, Jacques Brel, Kirsty MacColl, David Bowie, O’Connor and, of course, MacGowan. The encore is a triptych of reverence: Declan O’Rourke’s Galileo (Someone Like You), Nick Cave’s The Ship Song, and finally a tender sliver of Fairytale of New York, as she floats off into the cold, rainy Soho streets.

Between songs she hula-hoops, lies on her back with legs akimbo, perches on audience members, cuddles strangers,, greets old friends, makes weird cat noises and occasionally drifts into a stream of consciousness that is perilously – and delightfully – Joycean. At one point she quotes the man himself, as though to acknowledge the lineage.

O’Sullivan is a singular chanteuse: part Weimar cabaret, part Parisian dive bar, part Irish pub. Her voice can rasp like torn sandpaper or smooth into something like a warm glass of Irish coffee. She is, undeniably, an acquired taste – but one entirely worth acquiring. For those willing to surrender to her strange, seductive world, Loveletter at the Soho Theatre is an unmissable, intoxicating trip.

Five Stars.

Reviewed by Alan Fitter.

https://sohotheatre.com/events/camille-osullivan-loveletter/

https://camilleosullivan.com/