Writer and Director: Jude Hughes
Coming down to London for a few days is the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatics Club with its two-act two-hander about a man dying from AIDS in Northern Ireland. Presumably set at the end of the 1980s or early 1990s, the prognosis isn’t good for Liam. We watch him rail against the world and his boyfriend Matt, who, as hard as he tries, can’t do anything right for the difficult patient.
It’s lunchtime. Liam wants a cup of tea, but Matt insists on watching the news. Liam wants to go out, but Matt tells him it’s ‘lashing’ outside. Liam wants alcohol, but Matt reminds him that his liver has packed up. Liam wants a window cracked open, but when Matt does, he complains that it’s cold.
Liam says that he feels like a prisoner. In return, Matt says that Liam can leave whenever he wants to. However, Liam can barely walk, so feeble from the virus that’s killing him. And as the news plays in the background, Liam has a go at Matt for everything. Matt is as patient as a saint even when Liam begins on a tirade of internalised homophobia.
The two actors – Jacob Coughlan as Liam and Eddie Adams as Matt – are first rate, especially Coughlan, who, through his anger, reveals a terrifying vulnerability knowing that his days are numbered. Adams’s Matt, perhaps numbed by grief, manages to switch off when Liam is at his fiercest, but it would be more realistic if we were to see hints of exasperation with his boyfriend’s self-indulgence.
This first act lasts for 40 minutes or so, but the story doesn’t progress. It ends as it begins, despite Liam’s gesture of forgiveness. The second, shorter act has the same problem. Its story remains static. While most of the dialogue is authentically delivered with a nice smattering of Northern Irish colloquialisms such as “fruit” (derogatory term for a gay man), there are some awkward phrases. One is about gaslighting, but no one used that word until well into the 21st century. Likewise, the term ‘slut-shaming’ is a more recent invention. These expressions get the laughs, but they jar terribly for an older audience.
The play begins with Matt returning from the shops with Liam’s medication as if he’s just bought the pills from Boots, but in those days he would have collected them from the hospital or the sexual health clinic, not the high street at midday on a rainy Sunday. It feels as if writer Jude Hughes needs to do a little more research into the era.
More could be done with the Ulster setting, too. Apart from brief mentions of Bobby Sands’ hunger strike and Matt’s brother having a talent for burning cars, the Troubles and the paramilitaries are not explored at all. Hughes could have had the two men first meeting at legendary gay bar The Crow’s Nest or the club Kremlin rather than just getting together in an anonymous park to give a sense of place and time to the play.
But these issues aside, Giving Out is a brave play and finely acted, taking on a history that is only just now being understood.
Runs until 21 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
