UCI Student Takes Leap to Broadway : Stage: 20-year-old gets a leading role in ‘Les Miserables’ even though most of his work has been in community theater.

Eric Kunze, a 20-year-old UC Irvine junior with virtually no professionalexperience as an actor, will make his Broadway debut in one of the leading roles of “Les Miserables” on June 6.

Friday, while in New York on an internship with UCI classmates, Kunze--whose performing has been almost exclusively on the stage of a community theater in his native northern San Diego County--auditioned for the Tony award-winning musical that has been playing on Broadway since 1987.

Five minutes later, he was told he had landed the part of Marius, the young man who falls in love with Jean Valjean’s daughter, Cosette.

Kunze still needs an agent and an Actors Equity card; indeed, on Saturday, his head spinning, he still didn’t know the name of the theater where “Les Miserables” is playing. On the phone from New York, he was too excited to remember anything except that he’d been told to wait for the company manager to call and tell him where to go for his costume fitting.

“This is a great birthday present,” said Kunze, who was born and raised in Vista and who turns 21 Friday. “This is my first kind of legitimate job theatrically. It’s going to be pretty exciting. I’m going to work pretty hard. This is exactly what I want to do.”

For Kathy Brombacher, Kunze’s ascension to Broadway is less of a surprise.

Brombacher recruited him for the Moonlight Amphitheatre, a small non-Equity playhouse in Vista, when he was 16 and she was still a high school drama teacher. Since then he has played leading roles there in “42nd Street,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” “Into the Woods” and “Brigadoon.”

To Brombacher, Kunze’s talent for singing, dancing and acting was obvious: “He’s so dedicated and talented,” she said from her home in Vista. But even she didn’t think his big break would come so soon.

Kunze’s journey to the stage of “Les Miserables” actually began in August, when he went to see Davis Gaines, the star of the Los Angeles production of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Kunze had met Gaines through his roommate at United States International University where Kunze was a student for two years before transferring to UCI.

Kunze went backstage after a performance of “The Phantom” to say hello to the actor. Coincidentally, two casting agents for “Phantom”/”Les Mis” producer Cameron Mackintosh also were visiting Gaines and looking for actors for Mackintosh’s latest, “Five Guys Named Moe.” Gaines introduced them to Kunze, and they invited him to audition.

He did, but they ended up telling him he was too young for “Five Guys.” They told him they would be in touch, though, and in December, Mackintosh’s organization flew him to Chicago to audition for the part of Chris, the young American soldier, in the Broadway production of “Miss Saigon.”

Kunze didn’t get that part, either. Again, he was told he was too young. But Mackintosh’s agents asked him to get in touch the next time he was in New York.

So, when Kunze knew he would be there with a UCI class, he made an appointment with them. First, though, he worked in one more voice lesson with James Cook, the musical director at Moonlight.

Five minutes after his “Les Mis” audition, Kunze was asked to step outside for a few minutes.

“And then,” he recalled breathlessly, “they said, calmly, ‘We would like you to do Marius.’ And I tried to calmly say, ‘OK’ ”

Kunze credits Brombacher, Cook and the Moonlight organization for both turning him on to theater and giving him the training and experience he needed to succeed.

Brombacher and Cook both describe Kunze’s voice, a tenor with a bottom range, as a key to what makes him so exceptional.

“He not only has the physical makeup of a real leading man, but his voice has that bottom quality under the tenor sound that gives him more of a dramatic sense,” said Cook. “It’s quite a voice. He’s one of those people who can hit those high notes and still sound like a man, and that’s what is very appealing. He’s a tenor with strength.”

Cook added that Kunze has been “the most incredible success story” not just because of his natural talent, but because he has worked so hard on his voice and has progressed so rapidly. Cook has worked with others, privately and at Moonlight, who have gone on to become professionals. Misty Cotton, an Oceanside woman who now lives in Los Angeles, performed with Kunze at Moonlight and studied with Cook before being cast as Eponine in the San Francisco production of “Les Miserables” two years ago.

While Kunze waits to step through that stage door on Broadway next month, he will complete his junior year in New York, wrapping up his studies May 28. He then will take an extended leave of absence from school--and from Moonlight, where he had been scheduled to star as Frederic, the pirate apprentice, in “The Pirates of Penzance” this summer.

“I was really looking forward to it,” he said. “But I’ve been preparing myself for this for about three years. I know the scared feelings are going to come, but I’m thinking very positively. I do feel confident, I’m excited to do this, and I want to nail it.”