Stage hope Jenny bids for West End success with Over the Rainbow

A BUDDING stage star has pulled out of a student production of Footloose – to compete for the chance to star in a new West End production of The Wizard of Oz.

City teenager Jenny Douglas has already wowed a national TV audience as she bids to become Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical star.

The 18-year-old secured a place as one of the final ten contestants in the BBC show Over the Rainbow after beating off thousands of hopefuls, all desperate to play Dorothy in the new production.

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Friend Gregor Gilespie told the Evening News Jenny's star quality was always obvious.

"I hosted a variety show at the Barony Theatre, in Bo'ness, in January and invited her to sing.

"I said on stage afterwards that if she didn't make it in the next couple of years, I'd retire.

"She sang a selection of modern songs and she impressed the audience so much.

"I am thrilled for Jenny because all the girls who auditioned were so good. She thoroughly deserves a place in the top ten."

Jenny, a first-year musical theatre student at Motherwell College, missed a student production of Footloose on Saturday when she was fighting on national television for her place in Over the Rainbow.

She was due to play a part in the chorus, but had to pull out for her chance to impress Lloyd Webber and his team of celebrity judges.

Her college tutor, Gillian Archibald, said: "She was worried about missing the production – that's just what Jenny is like. She is very committed and never misses classes. She is a very popular student – the life and soul"

She added: "Jenny is a very talented singer and actress and she lights up on stage.

"She is a very bubbly girl and we're so excited for her. I think she will really enjoy being in the show. I suspect she will worry about how far she will go, but she is quite a confident person, which you need to be.

"We are just so proud of her and hope she can go even further."

Jenny lives with her mother in the west of the city, travelling back from Motherwell every weekend to the Capital.

At college she follows the Estill voice training programme and once had a singing lesson in New York with composer David Schaefer, which she said allowed her to discover more about her voice in an hour than "in my whole time of singing".

Jenny is a past performer on the travelling Keith Jack Tour and also attended the Scottish Theatre and Music School.

Yesterday, she was filming for the BBC ahead of her next appearance on Saturday night.

Mr Gilespie said: "She will realise she has been given a great opportunity here and I know she'll give it one thousand per cent."