OVER THE RAINBOW

Drag queen The Vivienne and Aston Merrygold of boyband JLS are the latest reality TV stars to try their hand at West End musicals - and to stunning effect as they tackle the Wicked Witch and Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz

- Richard Barber

JAMES Williams, better known as drag queen The Vivienne, was competing in last year's Dancing On Ice when fate came calling. "There's a week when you get to choose a song you want to skate to," he recalls. "I chose Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Growing up, I'd always adored the Wizard Of Oz film; and I played the Tin Man aged 10 in a school production."

West End producer Michael Harrison happened to see that edition of the ITV ice dancing show and subsequently approached Viv (it's what he likes to be called) about the possibility of him playing the Wicked Witch of the West in a new stage version of the musical.

"I was asked to send in a tape of me singing Rainbow. I thought it was maybe for a local production. Two weeks later, I posted off the tape. Then I got a call saying that Andrew and the producers really liked it," he says.

"Naively, I asked, 'Who the hell is Andrew? And they said, 'Andrew Lloyd Webber.' It turned out that this was to be a national tour, the revival of the show he'd written with Tim Rice. I'd never done musical theatre before. I went into full panic mode."

It was, admits Viv, 32, the biggest professional gamble he's ever undertaken.

He declares: "It's given me a new lease of life. I've completely fallen in love with that world. It means I've passed into the theatrical mainstream."

The production kicked off at the end of last year and will finally come to rest, for the first time, in the West End for a short run from today.

"We opened in December at the Liverpool Empire, an enormous theatre, playing to audiences of 2,300 people and sold out every night," says Viv.

"It was when we were performing in Southampton that Michael Harrison asked us not to make other plans for August and September because we were going into the West End. I burst out crying: 10-year-old James was screaming somewhere in disbelief."