Writer and Director Jude Hughes sits down with Josh Pritchard to discuss the origins behind CUADC's Camden Fringe show 'Giving Out', which previews at the Corpus Playroom in June.
I first heard about Giving Out upon its confirmation as the CUADC Camden Fringe Show for 2026. Following in the footsteps of last year’s Fringe productions, Penelope Quadrangle and Two Cowboys Get Stuck in a Well, the show arrived carrying high expectations. The production follows Liam and Matthew: Liam is sick, and Matthew has become his carer. What unfolds is less a sentimental portrait of illness than an extended series of arguments, tensions, and surprisingly, humour as the pair navigate Liam’s worsening condition together. When I sat down with Jude Hughes, the play’s writer and director, in Downing College, I asked where it all began.
The show began as a short piece at the Downing Festival of New Writing. Described by then-director Wilf Jenkinson as a piece “full of wit and completely disarming humanity,” Jude was happy to hear audiences had taken such an affinity with the piece. “I didn’t really call myself a theatre person - I liked plays, but it wasn’t really my nature.” Whilst writing for the special, the writer had looked to theatre’s biggest hits to come up with ideas. “I started watching [the National Theatre’s] Angels in America, and I found the dynamic between two of its characters really funny, and I wanted to expand it out. Caring for someone who does not want to be cared for was an idea that felt very relevant to me. I’ve been around that a little bit in my life, and I feel that it’s something that’s not portrayed often, or when it is, it’s done in a heroic or angelic way. I wanted to try something more real - the pair are just arguing, and it’s mundane, and it’s messy.”
Despite its macabre themes, the play has a very comedic tone. For Jude, this stems from his Irish background: “people are so much more open about death [in Ireland]. If you’ve ever seen Derry Girls, the wake scene is the most accurate depiction of Irish culture I’ve ever seen. I did find it weird when I came to England and people just hadn’t seen dead bodies, because there, it is such a social thing. But that makes it funny here because it’s just so ridiculous.”
Set against both the Troubles and the AIDS Crisis, the play gradually reveals that Liam and Matthew were once in a relationship - a dynamic that Jude believes deepens both the emotional and comic texture of the piece. “I wouldn’t call [the humour] a coping mechanism because it feels much more than that. [Their pain] is something that’s everyday, but it can also just be really funny at the same time, and we [as audiences] don’t always get to see that. We often want things to be one thing or another, and it’s interesting to see.” Jude’s understanding of this duality was shaped by his own family history. His parents lived through the Troubles and, as he describes it, had to simply “go about their day” while conflict unfolded around them: “it was something that was very much in the background” of ordinary life.
This production also marks another first experience for Jude as a director, something he has embraced as an intensely collaborative process: “It’s been really rewarding, and it’s nice as a writer to see when people bring so many ideas to your work. I love working with other people on projects like this, it just brings something really new and fresh.” Asked about how the play’s two stars, Eddie Adams and Jacob Coughlan, and how their dynamic has shaped the play’s substance, Jude is quick to praise them. “When we did callbacks, they just had such a good rhythm together. They both just got the humour, the tension. It would be really easy for the play to waver into being too serious, or too humorous, but they do such a good job at managing it really well. Eddie also pointed out that the script reads like Martin McDonough, and I was very flattered.”
Giving Out
by Jude Hughes
Wed 17 June - Sat 20 June 2026
Corpus Playroom
Click here to book your tickets!
Photography by Finlay Wyer