A Dirty Job

Michelle Nicastro figured if she could get through her first preview of “Les Miserables,” she could get through anything.

“Everything that could go wrong went wrong,” recalls the actress of that night last May, when various technical malfunctions caused an impromptu intermission--and during Nicastro’s big solo number, workmen scampered around the barricade behind her, hammering and waving their flashlights in the dark. “I wanted to turn around and scream, ‘What is happening? ‘ People in the audience were laughing. It was just awful.”

Nowadays, the mechanical gremlins are gone, and Nicastro is happily at home with her role as the lovelorn, doomed Eponine.

“I never wanted anything so bad,” she says. “And then to get it--well, life doesn’t usually have that kind of ending. The first time I listened to the cast album my jaw fell to the floor; I identified with it so strongly. I knew I wanted to be a part of it--in some way. It was my dream to play Eponine, but really, I would’ve done anything.”

Although she appeared in the popular musicals “The Boys From Syracuse” (at the Doolittle) and “Blame It on the Movies” (at the Coast) last year, “Les Miz” has brought the actress a whole new level of recognition.

“It’s better than saying, ‘I’m doing a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial’ ” she admits, “although I’m not putting that down. I did 2 1/2 years of them. Wherever I’d go, people said, ‘I know you from somewhere.’ I’d say, ‘I did this film and that film.’ ‘No, that’s not it.’ ‘Well, I did this television show and that one.’ ‘No, that’s not it.’ Then I’d say, ‘Well, I did the Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial’--and before I could even get that out, they’d yell, ‘Know your nuggets!’ ”

The prestige of her current role is not without drawbacks. Nicastro spends most of her time shuttling between Studio City and Century City, or on top of the “Les Miz” barricade, covered with mud. “It’s stage dirt, but it might as well be the real thing,” she says. “It gets right into my pores--on my legs, my arms, my face. Then there’s the blood in my hair.”

With no closing date in sight, the actress continues to enjoy time away from “Les Miz” (she recently flew to Chicago to do the new Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan film)--and with it.

“I don’t want to think about this show in terms of what it’s going to do for me. I’m not doing this so I can move on. I’m doing it because it’s a great job.”