Better Together

By David Weir

Better Together is a darkly comic drama that puts family ties to the test, and turns the spotlight on promises long held.

Arlene’s 18. It’s her independence day, and she’s about to drop a bombshell on her close-knit family. Meanwhile her older sister Shona pursues a different kind of freedom whilst her husband is in jail, then wonders whether going it alone is all it’s cracked up to be.

One family must face the consequences of its personal and political actions, of the promises they all made, and decide where their loyalties now lie. When it comes to the crunch, can the Finlays survive the growing up of their two daughters, and face the changing world outside their own front room?

‘Independence matters, Dad.’

Better Together was the winning play of Write Now 7, and was directed by Kate Bannister.

Biography

David was born in Edinburgh and has worked as a journalist in Fife, Hampshire, Norfolk, and London, where he now lives in Lewisham.

Among full-length plays, Better Together was the Write Now 7 winner, earning a three-week run at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre in 2016. Music from a Distant Shore toured the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth for Origins Theatre Company in 2014. Murdering the Truth (co-written), was performed at Greenwich Theatre in 2009.

His one-act plays include, No Occasion To, which won the Joy Goun Award at the Arundel Festival in 2011, was a Kenneth Branagh new dramatic writing award finalist at the Windsor Fringe the same year, and opened the spring season at Hayman’s Theatre, Perth, Australia, in 2015.  Lions of England and Confessional were performed by the Drip Action Theatre Company at the Arundel Festival in 2013 and 2014, and Lions of England also featured in the Essex International Play Festival at Southend in 2015 and the Stagewrite Festival at Bedford in 2016. His short, Bitter Looks, featured in Brockley’s Write Now 3 Festival, in 2012.

David’s work has twice been longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize—for Legacy in 2011, and for Better Together in 2015. Legacy was also shortlisted for the King’s Cross Award (2013). The Normandy Conquests won the Constance Cox Award in 2015.

David is currently working on a play about Thomas Aikenhead, the last Briton executed for uttering blasphemy.