A love letter in song to the band’s music, and perhaps more personal to her then any of the shows she has done before, ‘Queen of the Fringe’ (BBC) Camille O’Sullivan brings her acclaimed show CAVE, back to the UK, exploring the light and the dark of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – one of her favourite writers – in her dangerous yet fragile theatrical style.
Having sung Cave many times over the years in all his guises and characters, she decided to look at their back catalogue up to now and put a whole show together exploring the music in all it’s different aspects – the profane, the hymnal, the love song, the dignified, violent and dark side.
It all began when she was handed a cassette tape in the mid-90s by a beautiful Australian girl called Justine Mitchell (where is she now…) during Drama Society rehearsals for The Crucible while Camille was studying architecture at University College Dublin. Blown away by the music, the alchemy of the band and the storytelling, she had to keep on listening and hasn’t stopped. Where does one begin with that back catalogue?
In her spectacular new show, Camille embarks on a personal discovery of a man of many guises: violent, beautiful, crazy, devout and religious. Chameleon-like and celebrated worldwide for her five-star sell-out performances, Camille explores the beauty of Nick Cave’s music, and his life story, with her fierce and mesmerizing voice to give you an unforgettable night of madness, beauty, darkness and love.
Camille O’Sullivan Sings Cave recently premiered in Australia and New Zealand to critical praise and sell-out crowds, before she performed to packed houses at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe during August this year.
“Hearing O’Sullivan was like witnessing a reincarnation of the most extraordinary female vocalists. At times she had the storyteller’s talent of Patti Smith, the timbre of Marianne Faithful, the deadpan of Nico and then the jet-engines started to roar, and we got a touch of Janis Joplin.” RADIO13 (NZ)
Camille first stormed the Edinburgh Festival Fringe fifteen years ago with her own show, and as one of the original stars of the Olivier Award Winning La Clique. It was the festival that launched her as one of the most exciting artists on the world-wide stage and her most recent shows, The Carny Dream and Where Are We Now? received many five-star reviews in Edinburgh as well as on tour. This is a very different type of show: still a rock gig but with more imagery and recordings, which give it a darker, more spiritual edge and put the songs in a setting more suited to their new home at the Pleasance.
She is the only artist in Edinburgh to have performed at the International and the Fringe Festivals in the same year – 2012 – for her music show and for her tour de force role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Rape of Lucrece. As well as adapting the classic Shakespeare poem with Feargal Murray and creating original music for the show, she won a Herald Angel Award for her performance.
Other awards include the prestigious Helpmann Award for her Sydney Festival shows in 2015, ‘Best Music’ Argus Award at The Brighton Festival, ‘Best Music’ awards at Dublin and Melbourne Festivals and a Spirit of the Fringe at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.She was recently named one of the top 25 performances ever on Later with Jools Holland by the Daily Telegraph.
Shakespeare’s Lucrece was remounted this year at The Gate Theatre in Dublin and is currently touring. She was named Irish Tatler’s Woman of the Year in Music and performed the songs of Radiohead with a 40-piece orchestra at the 2015 Wilderness Festival to much acclaim. As an actress, Camille was recently seen at the Barbican and Dublin Theatre Festival, performing Woyzeck in Winter as well as in the film Pick-Ups with Aiden Gillen.
Recently, Camille performed alongside Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, Sinead O’Connor, Bobby Gillespie and Bono as a guest at Shane McGowan’s 60th birthday celebrations gig at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. she also performed alongside Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos in Jim Jarmusch Revisited at the Barbican and throughout Europe.
Other acting roles include the film Mrs. Henderson Presents alongside Judi Dench and Will Young, Constance in The Guardian’s Shakespeare Solos, the RTE TV series Rebellion as Countess Mackievicz and a scene-stealing performance on BBC Two’s Later… With Jools Holland (which lead her to support him at The Royal Albert Hall) Camille was also chosen by Yoko Ono to perform John Lennon’s Double Fantasy alongside Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux at Meltdown 2014.
Camille has performed to audiences at London O2, Sydney Opera House and Royal Festival Hall. She returned to London’s iconic venues the Roundhouse Theatre, The Globe and Union Chapel in the last year performing her show to a sold-out crowd. She will return for two nights to Union Chapel with this show.
She has performed a 2 week-long, sold-out run of her critically acclaimed Brel show at Wilton’s Music Hall followed recently by the Carny Dream. This show has just premiered there which has also been released as a live CD, as well as a sell-out concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin with the National Symphony Orchestra and toured Australia with her new show Ancient Rain, setting famous Irish poetry to song. In 2016, Camille also had a sell-out residency in New York (and returned for another run of shows in Autumn 2017) where The Independent UK described her as ‘Camille takes New York by storm – The eccentric, dramatic singer people can’t stop talking about’.
