TODAY, it's pandas Tian Tian and Yang Guang that visitors to Edinburgh Zoo queue to see.

But in the decades after the Second World War there was a different ursine star in residence there – Wojtek, the beer-drinking soldier bear.

Raised from a cub by Polish soldiers fighting with the Allies, the Syrian bear was drafted into the Polish II Corps and served with them in the Egyptian and Italian campaigns. At the end of the war, he was garrisoned near Duns in the Borders along with many of his comrades and in 1947 presented to Edinburgh Zoo, where he lived until his death in 1963 and where he became a symbol of freedom to Poles then under the rule of the Soviets.

Since then, books have been written and documentaries made about the bear. Now, for the first time, the story has been turned into a drama by Edinburgh playwright Raymond Ross and his stage company, Theatre Objektiv.

Wojtek The Bear runs at Edinburgh's Storytelling Centre from tomorrow until Saturday ahead of a full Fringe run, and it's testament to Wojtek's fame that news of the production has already generated front page stories in two Polish newspapers. The play itself centres on the relationship between Wojtek and Lance Corporal Piotr Prendys, the soldier who raised him from a cub. Prendys is played by John McColl while James Sutherland, without mask or bear costume, takes the role of Wojtek.

Ross told The Herald: "The play re-enacts their life together as they try to come to some understanding of what they went through during the war and how they were separated. Piotr cried for weeks afterwards when he had put the bear in the zoo. But it was either that or give him to a Communist zoo in Gdansk or Warsaw – and as a symbol of Free Poland, he wouldn't have lasted long in there."

For Ross, whose father served with the Polish forces during the war, the play is the culmination of a long-held fascination with Wojtek and what he symbolised. "I went to school just literally over the wall from the zoo and we used to nip over it at lunchtimes so I can remember seeing him as a youngster," he said.

Wojtek was renowned for his love of beer and cigarettes but the most celebrated moment in his army career came at the Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944 when he was used to transport crates of ammunition. In recognition of his service, his Polish company adopted a badge showing him carrying an artillery shell.