FANCY a beer with your sexual obsession?

Then Firebrand Theatre Company’s taboo-breaking new production is the place to go.

Blackbird is David Harrower’s award-winning play which confronts one of society’s most problematic concerns.

And to celebrate the company’s third anniversary, they are throwing in a free beer or glass of wine for each member of the audience.

The production features actors Greg Wagland and Romana Abercromby as well as Kelso teenager Esme Biggar, who is making her professional stage debut. Esme has been doing drama workshops with the Helen O’Grady Drama Academy since she was six.

After progressing through Borders Youth Theatre, last year she joined the Shakespeare at Traquair company, performing as the Herald in King Lear and toured in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Romana will be known to Borders audiences for her role in Dogstar’s The Baroness, which toured to Hawick last autumn.

Firebrand’s Richard Baron is delighted with his cast and the chance to direct one of the most powerful and daring plays of the last decade.

He told us: “It’s a huge challenge for the actors, both technically and emotionally.

“But Blackbird, like David Mamet’s Oleanna, is a significant and important play that confronts one of the most current concerns in our society head-on.

“It’s thrilling, moving, shocking and thought-provoking: all the ingredients of good theatre.” Blackbird runs at the Heart of Hawick over three nights, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 20, 21 and 22.

And then it moves along the A7 to The Space - Heriot Watt/Borders College, Galashiels, on Monday, February 24.

Tickets for the Hawick performances are available from 01450 360688 and the Galashiels date is tickets on the door.