The production team involved with both JCS and Don Carlos is the one she's used for years and includes Peter Davis, Mark McCullough, Roger Kirk, and Anthony van Laast. They're a tight-knit group but, she adds, "We're ruthless with each other."

Edwards trained at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NITA), which celebs like Mel Gibson and Cate Blanchett also attended, and she has taught acting there. But while she says, "I love teaching," she probably won't be doing much officially anytime soon. She's now got that job-landing reputation as someone who can whip the classics into new-millennium shape--for which she gives much credit to Trevor Nunn. He's the mentor who brought her to the RSC before he assumed the leadership of the Royal National Theatre.

As a member in good standing of the RUG club, Edwards was on hand to develop Whistle Down the Wind for its initial workshop showing a few years back in the 250-seat theater Lloyd Webber has at Sydmonton, his country estate. If she was miffed when Harold Prince was subsequently asked to do the first commercial production, she isn't copping to it--possibly because, when that version failed to get out of Washington, D.C. intact, Lloyd Webber handed Edwards the show for its London stint, which is still whistling.

Add to Edwards' credits The Boy From Oz, a "non-linear" musical about the life of Peter Allen she's hoping to bring here from Australia next year. She looks forward to that as she looks forward to everything she does in any way connected with theater. And when she says "theater," how does she define it? "It's a communal tribal experience of people coming together to share the experience of the tribe." She thinks over what she's just said and chuckles and continues, somewhat abashed, "I guess that's not what I'm supposed to say."

Whether she is or she isn't, she makes one thing very clear. "I love theater," she repeats with a smile as broad as a theater marquee. "I love it all."