The Spiegel Queen Presents...

"Its all tongue and groove", says Camille O'Sullivan, without any hint of double entrendre, as she sips a glass of wine in the East Village. Ireland's most glamorous circus performer, interpreter of the dark and enchanting music of the world's finest narrative songwriters, is actually describing the structure of the Spiegeltent, which is pitched at New York's Pier 17 until October 1. A globe trotting-curiosity, the Spiegeltent is host to more than eighty acts, headlined by the subversive cabaret troupe, Absinthe, with whom Camille has toured for the past two years. With its opulent mix of canvas, cut glass, mirrors, velvet and brocade, the Spiegeltent is the perfect venue for Camille's dramatic performances of the songs of Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Nick Cave, David Bowie and Tom Waits. She is also set to wow New York audiences on September 5, 13 and 19 with her solo show "La Fille Du Cirque".

It has been a busy year for Camille, who has enjoyed sell-out seasons in the UK and Australia, where she picked up an award for Best Music 2005 at the Brighton Fringe Festival, and Best Cabaret Artiste, at the Melbourne Theatre Awards 2005. But despite performances at the Sydney Opera House, and a role opposite Judi Dench in Stephen Frears' Oscar nominated film, Mrs Henderson Presents, Camille still calls the Spiegeltent home. "The first time I performed there I felt tearful" she says, referring to the Famous Spiegeltent, where Marlene Dietrich sang "Falling in Love Again" in the 1930s. It is also the tent in which Camille usually tours with Absinthe (known in Europe as La Clique), an international cast of acrobats, contortionists, comedians and entertainers, whose style is described as a meld of Berliner Kabarett and old-school New York Vaudeville.

Performing in English, French and German, Camille has been hailed as one of the most gifted interpreters of narrative songs yet to appear. "What I like in these songs is they make people think. They make me think. Some are funny, some are very dark, some are angry, some are very soft. I like that, for myself as a person, I've really gone through an experience when I'm singing. I like to feel everything." Her repertoire consists mainly of male song writers which she admits hold more attraction for her.

"I'm actually more interested at this stage in singing men's songs. I think there's too much sweet emotion in women's songs - sometimes, not all of them - but a guy's song sometimes has an edge to it and a darkness, and if you bring a woman's emotion to it then you bring it into a softer place, so you kind of do two things."

Nick Cave's songs, she says "always have a sad twinge to them ... but its always very euphoric sadness. It's not like sadness that's going to kill you. It's a bit like Amsterdam [by] Jacques Brel. They are sad songs but you feel a bit explosive after having sung them." But while the world of Waits, Cave and Brel she says is "painfully truthful", she tries to balance it with the humour and the drama in the narrative. "One moment you can be emotional and sad, and the next minute you're climbing out with a red pillow sleeping on someone's lap and singing a song."

It is a far cry from the early days when Camille gigged in the Da Club and Andrew's Lane, in Dublin, along with Jack L and Jeanette Byrne. Together this small group of performers sought to introduce cabaret to Irish audiences. "When I think of how it began ... it was mental. It wasn't like we had a tradition of cabaret in Ireland. We have a great tradition of story telling and a wonderful appreciation of music, but that type of thing was always seen as Liza Minnelli. People always put it into a box and visualised it as Jury's Cabaret or Blackpool Cabaret."

Hard to believe that by day Camille was then studying to be an architect at University College Dublin. Obliged to complete one years work experience during her course, Camille chose to work in Berlin where she "soaked it all in at the cabaret clubs." At the same time her show, "Jaques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris" was enjoying problematic success back in Dublin. "They used to go crazy because ... it kept getting asked back for reruns, so I'd get back to Berlin and I'd say, 'I can only work for two weeks because the show is happening again'."

Irish audiences soon warmed to the notion of cabaret proper, but Camille recalls the rawness of the performances. "I met a friend of mine recently in Montréal who used to sing with me. He said do you remember the wine bottles that used to be thrown on stage? It used to be crazy. It used to be people pretty much walking on stage to be with you and that's what's great about this type of performing its very interactive." It was not until the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2003, when the Spiegeltent made its Irish debut, that there was at last a venue "specifically made for this kind of performing."

After the Dublin Fringe Festival, Camille decided to make an application to David Bates, owner of the Famous Spiegeltent and Producer of La Clique. "I loved touring Ireland, but there would only have been a certain life span in being a cabaret singer there. You can't keep on doing them without people going "right who's next?" Known affectionately by his cast, as the Spiegel Maestro, Bates invited Camille to do a show in Brighton. "I was very lucky he gave me a gig in Brighton. Then I asked could I do Edinburgh. I was so nervous because it is a big psychological jump for any performer. It's only across the water but you feel like you are being put on test ... and maybe you're not that good."

But the show was a huge success and Camille was spotted by actor Ewan Bremner, who recommended her to Stephen Frears, who was looking to cast the role of variety performer Jane, in his film Mrs Henderson Presents. Although she was unaware at the time, Camille was up against stars such as Natalie Imbruglia, Martine McCutcheon and Minnie Driver. "I received a call one day from Stephen Frears. He said, 'Are you any good? Have you any humour? You look a bit bloody dark on your website.' I said 'Yes, yes, yes, I've got loads of humour.' Then he said, 'You sound very confident'. I said, 'Yes, it's the Celtic Tiger'. I was going, 'oh shit. What am I saying?'" With just two days to prepare for her London audition, Camille did not admit to Frears that she had fallen down some steps in Edinburgh and was barely able to walk. "I had to do a dancing, singing, acting audition. There was twelve people in the room. They said do you want water? I said no, I want whiskey!"

Although she insists she is not good at auditions ("I fuck them up every time"), she clinched the part to co-star with actor/singer Will Young. "It was like a lottery ticket. You couldn't have asked in your lifetime for something like that to happen. It was an extraordinary experience." With Bob Hoskins calling her "sugar plum" in his Australian drawl, and the distraction of the 1920s costumes, Camille's initial nerves were short -lived. "The costumes were incredible. It was the first time I had ever worn a corset ...and it was a big liberation for me. Everyone thinks you've lost so much weight and you're going, 'You fools! I'm just tightening the corset!' I'm telling you, it makes you look amazing. It changed the way I feel on stage."

At the same time, Camille insists that she is not just the sum parts of her corset and wants her audiences to look beyond the fishnets and the sequins. "I think that women are always seen as sexy chanteuse, and I'm very happy to sell my shows on those photographs to get people to come to the show and then go 'actually no'. But I'm not interested in that part of myself at all. I can do that, and any woman can do that. We can all put on the persona. My interest is what's the child in you? What's the adult? What's the woman who doesn't have a clue? What's the madness in you? That makes it for a rollercoaster."

The rollercoaster shows no signs of slowing in New York, where Camille is already forming a loyal following. "This morning having coffee, it was so funny, there was [actors] Jessica Lang and Sam Shepard. Just by chance they were beside me. So one person came up and she said, 'I saw your show', and then the woman behind the counter serving coffee said 'I saw the show too', and then two people behind me said it, and I was going hee, hee, hee." She has found New Yorkers to be "very vocal, very warm people" except when she is cycling through the city on her vintage bicycle when "they are giving out to you like hell." While she is here, she has taken the opportunity to enrol in French grammar classes to make her French mother proud. A French teacher at the Alliance Francais in Dublin, Camille jokes that her mother is "particular". "She'll introduce me to her friends and push me out of the way really quickly. 'This is Camille, au revoir!'"

Her parents met in Monte Carlo, when her father was a racing driver and Camille and her sister grew up in Passage West, Co. Cork. Having qualified as an Architect in 1996 with first class honours, the decision to give up the day job was not an easy one for Camille. "My parents were too worried for me to do acting. They said you are too sensitive. It's going to kill you. And then it came to a time where I said, 'Yeah, I'm too sensitive but it's going to kill me if I don't.' You learn how to protect yourself." Now her parents are her biggest fans. "You know your mother is in the audience when it sounds like a penguin going clap, clap, clap. Everyone else has stopped clapping and you're like, 'That woman over there, who looks like me, who's clapping still? I don't know her'." And her mother rings her before every gig. "She'd ring and go, 'a thousand merdes'- that's a thousand shits. In French, it means really good luck."

For Camille, having run away with the circus, the dream is now very real. "In my lifetime I always wanted to go to Australia, and now in the last two years I've gone seven times. You couldn't wish for anything better to be travelling with that tent, those crazy people - and I say that including myself ... when you come into a show like that you have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that it only has a certain life."