Loveletter Camille O’Sullivan with collaborator and musician Feargal Murray
Her Majesty’s Theatre. Adelaide Festival. March 4-5 2025
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
No-one can deny the spellbinding talent of Camille O’Sullivan. With the vocal range and emotional intensity of a cyclone of song, O’ Sullivan is a unique and captivating artist. Her show Loveletter is a tribute to the singers who have inspired her but tragically are no longer with us. She mourns the loss of inspirations like Shane McGowan, frontman of the Pogues (A Rainy Night in Soho)), Kirsty MacColl (Fairytale in New York), the wonderful Sinead O’Connor (My Darling Child), Jacques Brel (In the Port of Amsterdam). David Bowie (Blackstar) and Leonard Cohen (Anthem). Loveletter is penned in the song of the soul. Sentimental, raunchy, fierce and introspective O’Sullivan pays tribute to her idols and makes their memory in song her own. Her rendition of Jacques Brel’s In The Port of Amsterdam is the most dynamic tearing of the heart I have ever heard or seen, a circular saw ripping through steel and shooting the sparks into the firmament. From the raunchy In These Shoes of Kirsty MacColl to the resigned wisdom of Leonard Cohen’s Anthem, O’Sullivan shows that the songs of the dead live on in the hearts and minds of the living. Their poetry rings with the chime of the human spirit. They are the Muse, O’Sullivan their acolyte. From punk to pop and rock to jazz O’Sullivan sings her Loveletter with expressive force or gentle introspection. Her devotees sing along, a chorus of delight and adulation.
There is wisdom in the saying that less is sometimes more. O’Sullivan, on the stage of Her Majesty’s Theatre was in need of a director and dramaturge. Her singing could fill a stadium. Her banter becomes drawn out, often inaudible and mostly unnecessary. Her self-effacement “I’m falling apart” diminishes the power of her performance in the songs. In the first half of the show O’Sullivan is more controlled. The quips are there, the banter still offered as a touch of standup or at times lie-down comedy, but there is discipline. In the second half of the show, the softly sung songs are interrupted by mutterings and jokes directed at the front row of the stalls.
The result is a show advertised at one hour fifty minutes including a twenty minute interval that ran for almost two and three quarter hours with encores and chat. Devotees applauded enthusiastically, grateful in their adoration.
O’Sullivan and Murray are outstanding interpreters and performers. To see Murray playing a trumpet while playing with one hand on the keyboard is a treat. To be swept away by O’Sullivan’s vocal command and emotive force is acknowledgement enough of an unique talent. This was a Loveletter that was just too long.
