Performance anxiety

On a drab, rainy Edinburgh morning, Camille O’Sullivan lights up the ornate main auditorium of the Cameo Cinema by turning a photo-shoot into what feels like an impromptu performance. The camera is the French-Irish chanteuse’s audience; dressed in leopard-print coat and red stockings she’s treating it to a rum old show, perching playfully on the lip of a velvet seat or draping herself lazily across a row quipping “all I need is a joint” in her West Cork brogue. For an encore she dons a severe black-bobbed wig—“my hair’s shit today,” she grumbles—clambers up in front of the screen and pulls its huge gold curtains around her, framing a face all seductive scarlet lippy pout and deep brown eyes with a mischievous glint.

She’s the kind of naturally fun and easy company you could imagine spending a lost evening with, sharing red wine and dirty jokes. And yet it masks a personality O’Sullivan describes as “schizophrenic”; even after a decade-long career as a performer and seven trips to the Fringe—to sing for sell-out crowds at steadily larger venues—she’s still troubled by a fear of performing.

“I know I’m friendly,” she says, after we sit down for coffee in the Cameo's cafe. “I know I’m chatty,”—an understatement—“but anything I’ve done that I was good at it, I’m a scaredy cat about it. Even when I was an architect [she was an award-winner in the profession before becoming a singer] I had to push myself.” She thought she was bringing her stage-fright under control until earlier this summer, when O’Sullivan suffered a new string of panic attacks before shows. “I was like ‘oh my god, I thought you were gone,’ and it all came back.”

It’s hard to square with the ever-more commanding and dramatic stage presence of an eccentric, smouldering and sometimes painfully vulnerable singer who doesn’t so much inhabit the songs of all from Kurt Weill to Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Radiohead as move in and put up new curtains. “I love to sing,” she admits coyly, “I’m not too sure about the whole going in front of people. I know that sounds weird… I’m delighted when it’s over.”

With that in mind you’d expect to find O’Sullivan taking a cautious approach to the Fringe this year, but not so. Last night was the debut for Feel, her brand new show inspired by the “pure, bitter sweet darkness” of fairytales and incorporating everything from an Arcade Fire song to Tom Waits’ voice trapped in a suitcase. It was the first time she’d ever premièred a production in Edinburgh; it went well, but she’s anticipating an unpredictable ride through the coming three weeks. “I feel like an asteroid just heading towards my destination,” she says. “There’s nothing I can do now – it’s just going for it.”

The Fringe has played a key role in breaking O’Sullivan as a singer – a career she took-up after a near-fatal car crash in 1999 provoked a reordering of her priorities. The daughter of an Irish racing driver and a French artist, she first appeared in Edinburgh in the cast of risqué cabaret/variety show La Clique in 2003; in the years since she’s become a familiar presence at the festival. “Every performer has a different way to handle the Fringe,” says O’Sullivan. “When I first came I was so blown away – I was doing my flyers and my posters with a gin and tonic in hand. Now it’s more about protecting yourself to get up on stage and do your show.”

She’s glad to see cabaret has been given its own section in the Fringe brochure this year, though it’s a label she shies away from. “It can bracket you – not to people who understand cabaret, but to people who think it’s all fishnets and feather boas, and then they mistake you for burlesque. My mother said ‘don’t wear fishnets anymore Camille, people are going think you’re stripping!’”

Lately she’s been branching out into new territory. Together with her long-time musical director Feargal Murray, O’Sullivan has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company on music for their new production of The Rape of Lucrece, which she’ll tour internationally. She’s also recorded an album which includes a song penned especially for her by Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody. Bigger audiences, bigger expectations and bigger nerves may await, but O’Sullivan takes strength from the knowledge that she’s not alone in being intimidated by her profession. “I felt when I was by myself going through it ‘oh, you’re a weirdo,’” she reveals. “But then I’ve worked with people I really admired and discovered they really suffer from it too.

“My guitarist said it must be a good ego boost to get up and do what I do. I was like ‘Jesus no!’ For me it’s almost like a necessity to perform – it’s not a love of it, it’s a real necessity.

“Sometimes you do feel like saying ‘that’s it, I’m moving to West Cork, I’m growing vegetables, I’ve had it!’ But I think that’s the same for everybody. You have to keep on have a love for it and keep dreaming about it. I say that now,” O’Sullivan laughs, “give me 30 days.”