Explaining what Camille O’Sullivan’s performances are like is a hard task. One minute you feel you’re at a rock concert, the next the tone is intimate and confessional before it transitions to a visual spectacle. I was swept away by her Edinburgh performance of The Carny Dream, the show she is bringing to Cambridge in March, but I am struggling to articulate what you can expect.

It seems it is not an easy task: I ask O'Sullivan to explain, and she also struggles. “I always find it difficult, and I always go ‘can someone please explain what I do?’” she tells me with a laugh. 

“Essentially I love story-telling; I’m obsessed with the music of Nick Cave, Bowie, Dylan, Radiohead. And it’s about inhabiting those songs, and becoming those songs onstage,” she explains. “And it’s kind of theatrical and it’s rock. Some people have kind of likened it to an emotional rollercoaster, because it’s all kind of based on emotion, but it’s about showing the light and the dark as well.”

O'Sullivan’s performances are generally composed of performing covers of others’ songs – often radically re-imagined. But she is keen to stress that this does not make it any less personal, because she is “inhabiting the songs, and even though they’re other people’s songs, you’re really revealing yourself in every aspect. Your vulnerability, your harshness, your anger, your kindness. You’re showing all these different parts and expressiveness to yourself.” 

For O'Sullivan, this is different to theatre in that it is more intimate, explaining that as an actor “you can bring yourself but you’re hiding within that character. Many people would probably think as I’m singing other people’s songs, ‘well it can’t be you, it doesn’t belong to you’, but it’s more me than anything because it’s allowing me to really delve”.

“As a woman, it’s not all about your sexuality – you can be anything, you can be a child, you can be a man, you can be so many different things”

And yet, she is keen to stress the theatricality of her performances, noting how she has to strike a balance between trying “to bring people into this journey and to be quite chameleon on stage” while also making it appear “not like you’re faking it”. 

She is not unaware of the contradictions to her philosophy here, laughing as she explains “this is kind of the schizophrenic side to it, I’m not saying I’m not interested in being Camille on stage. I’m interested in becoming those characters, but in singing songs you actually discover things about yourself that you never would have known were possible”.

I ask O'Sullivan about whether she would ever consider writing her own music. Her answer is refreshingly honest: “I’d love to. To be honest, I’m such a scaredy-cat. When I was an architect I was such a scaredy-cat to even step up on stage and become a performer”. However, after being seriously injured in a car accident, Camille was “jolted” forward into her current career. “The other thing I’ve really always wanted to do is write my own songs, but it’s like I need a kick. The things you want to do sometimes are the things you fear the most.”

Levison Wood: ‘It’s not just adventure for adventure’s sake’

The trained architect still clearly resides in O'Sullivan, as she talks passionately about buildings – ranging from the beautiful venues she has performed in, to the cardboard gingerbread house she constructs on stage for her current tour. Indeed, she jokes in self-deprecating fashion about her lack of formal musical training, telling me that her band teases her for “approach[ing] rehearsals like an architect”.

A lot of the songs O'Sullivan sings are written by men, requiring her often to sing from a male perspective. I note my interest in how she feels gender interacts with her performances, and she explains that this results from an accident rather than any form of intent. 

That said, when I push her gently, O'Sullivan does admit that she is drawn to “that black humour, the darkness, not too sweet, not too sexy”. She stresses the importance of “the notion [that] as a woman it’s not all about your sexuality – that you can be anything, you can be a child, you can be a man, you can be so many different things”

“Definitely don’t try and be like other people because that’s their journey. Go on your own”

She continues, “And, as time is going on, I also like to show myself fall apart. I think it’s kind of an interesting aspect, that life is mad, and people go yeah, mine is too, and so they enjoy the show. It’s cathartic.” 

Indeed, at 42, O'Sullivan feels it is very important to show herself as older on stage: “I remember seeing a woman singing in her 70s and thinking this can be for life, singing, and I think it should be like that for little girls”. She jokingly admits that she uses a younger “propaganda photograph” to get the audience through the door, only to enjoy subverting their expectations.

Finally, I ask O'Sullivan for her tips for young people considering a career in performance. “Just do it” she responds without hesitation, before repeating important advice she has been given in her own career: “do five things for your career every day by one o’clock. Whether that’s going to an exhibition or film to be inspired, write to a director, write to a venue – be proactive, that’ll go on for the rest of your life. And somebody else said ‘see where you’d like to be in five years and work backwards’. And that could be who you’d like to be like, see their journey.” 

She concludes: “Definitely don’t try and be like other people because that’s their journey – it’s too long and too hard, the money isn’t good enough to go on their journey. Go on your own”.

Camille O'Sullivan will be bringing her show, The Carny Dream, to the Cambridge Junction at 8pm on Friday 10th March