Steve Pratt catches up with the so-called good guys of Emily Tierney(Glinda) and Samuel Edwards (Flyero)

Emily Tierney knows all there is to know about Glinda, who first turned up as the good witch in The Wizard Of Oz and now takes centre-stage in the hit musical Wicked.

For the past year she’s been flying high in Glinda the Good’s bubble in Wicked, at odds with fellow sorcery student Elphaba as she turns into the Wicked Witch of the West in the show revealing the story of the witches of Oz.

Wicked wasn’t the first time she’d waved a wand as Glinda. She played her in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revival of The Wizard Of Oz at the London Palladium. “That was so different – in that show I was only on stage for about 15 minutes whereas in Wicked I literally don’t leave the stage for two-and-a-half hours,” she says.

“She was a grown-up Glinda in The Wizard Of Oz and far different from the fun, naughty teenage Glinda I get to play in this show. I definitely know everything there is to know about the Wizard of Oz. I watched the film a lot for research, particularly for the Palladium show because it was so closely linked.”

Co-star Samuel Edwards, who plays Flyero in the UK tour, chips in: “I was forced to watch the film every Christmas.”

Both appeared and understudied in the West End production before embarking on Wicked’s UK tour. Tierney had just started drama school when she saw the show when it first opened in London in 2006 after she’d just started at drama school. “I just remember thinking, ‘I want to be in this show’. I’d never seen anything like. There isn’t another show like it, it’s unique – and that’s probably why it’s lasted so long,” she says.

Edwards was also a drama college student when he saw the show and is delighted that both of them have got their dream roles.

The success of Wicked – seen by more than 44 million people in 13 countries including a UK tour that’s already sold more than one million tickets – puts the performers under pressure in roles that, Tierney points out, “have been played by some top people”. They also want to please the show’s many devoted fans.

“I definitely felt under pressure not just because of the history of the show but because of the fans because they come with a lot of expectation. They’ve seen whoever doing in the West End and are sitting there thinking are you going to be as good? So you feel under pressure to be on form every day,” she adds.

There’s nothing quite like flying out on stage in her bubble to face an audience of 3,000 people, as was happening when we met before Christmas during the Edinburgh Playhouse run. Being in her flying bubble isn’t a problem. “I just stand there and get clipped in,” she explains. “Everyone says are you scared? And actually one of my understudies last year wouldn’t let go of it because she was so terrified. But you can’t fall out of the bubble and it will hold two tons or something. I can put a bit of weight on at Christmas and it will still carry me.

“It’s really cool and still gets me every single night and I’m not just saying that - I feel really lucky every day. And especially when Ashleigh (Gray) and I walk out at the end and the audience will hopefully stand up, it’s really amazing. It hits you like a wall.

“We’ve been told the Sunderland audiences are pretty spectacular so we hope they’ll enjoy it.” she says.

Wicked attracts people to see it time and time again. Edwards feels it’s partly because there’s something anyone of any age, male or female, can identity with in the story. “They’ll see part of themselves in one of the characters on stage and can relate to that. I remember at the end the other night there was a young girl on the front row bawling her eyes out, just because she’d connected with the story or seen herself in one of the characters. That’s really special,” he says.

“My granddad came to see it in Edinburgh and spoke to someone who’d was back to see it for the fourth time in four weeks.”

It’s a long tour, but both are finding doing the show isn’t turning into a chore. “It keeps fresh for us because the audience is different at every venue. Up North they’re really fun. Every theatre’s different and our technical team are incredible,” says Tierney.

Both have moved from the chorus to leading roles. Edwards was a late starter, with a high school production of Grease at 18 gave him his first taste of stage work. “I played Danny and was brilliantly terrible, but from there someone said to me I might have potential. I thought it might be a bit of fun and I loved it,” he says.

Tierney wasn’t one of those little girls who had dance lessons, but being cast at the age of 13 in the lead role of Joseph in that Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical made her take performing seriously. “I had so much fun singing Close Every Door to Me every night. After that I started having singing lessons.

“Both of us went to drama school in London and worked our way up. We didn’t go straight into leading roles because that doesn’t really happen, so we’ve both done our time in the ensemble and understudied and everything. Being in this show makes you feel very lucky,” she says.

Wicked: Sunderland Empire, March 31-April 25. Box office 0844-8713022 and online atgtickets.com/sunderland