DATELINE NEW YORK: You never know who you'll meet in New York. Take last week, at a Saturday matinee performance of "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway. I'm waiting for the curtain to rise, and a voice beckons, "Wayne, is that you?" Turns out to be Peter Lawrence, onetime drama critic at The Advertiser. Now a key player in New York theater (he was assistant director for the hit show, "Spamalot"), Lawrence was soaking up shows before they close. A few rows behind him at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre: composer Marvin Hamlisch, whose "A Chorus Line" will be revived Sept. 19 at the Schoenfeld Theatre, where the show's poster (as well as color ads in The New York Times) depicts Hawai'i's Jason Tam. The actor will portray Paul San Marco. You can catch Tam on the small screen in the series "Beyond the Break" now airing on the N network. ...

At a performance of "The Color Purple," Debbi Morgan, who plays Angie Baxter Hubbard on "All My Children," signed a few autographs. ...

GUIDING LIGHT: It's nice to have a "local" guide to share under-the-tourist-radar spots. Richard Vida, who played Thernardier in "Les Miserables" on Broadway, took us around Greenwich Village, stopping by Magnolia Bakery for its cupcakes (thanks to "Sex and the City"), before venturing to "Some Girl(s)," a comedy starring Eric McCormack ("Will and Grace") at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, where four fab actresses shared the stage: Fran Drescher ("The Nanny"), Maura Tierney ("ER"), Judy Reyes ("Scrubs") and Brooke Smith (many plays and TV credits). The piece de resistance, however, was dining at Chumley's, an old speakeasy (from the prohibition era), at 86 Bedford St. in the West Village. You have to know where to go — there's no sign —to join the revelers. The walls and furniture are embellished with decades of carvings, and there are hundreds of vintage book jackets (legend has it that F. Scott Fitzgerald scribbled some of "The Great Gatsby" in the one-time literary hangout), Playbills and star photos. ...

We dined with Vida and his partner, Bob Billig (conductor for the musical "Wicked"), as well as local publicist Lisa Josephsohn (on a working vacation) and former Isle entertainer Kevin I (Iwamoto), now a travel-and-lodging exec with Hewlett-Packard (he was in New York for a business meeting) at the Redeye Grill on Seventh Avenue. What a surprise to find a brothy mix of seafood, chicken and udon — essentially shabu shabu. ...

REVELATIONS: Over dinner at Bond 45, Isle actor Joey Caldarone (visiting parents in New Jersey and seeing shows) revealed he's in negotiations to produce and develop an off-Broadway play, hopefully in a few months. He was poring over the script. ...

"The Drowsy Chaperone," a hit musical at the Marquis Theatre, has two local ties — Kevin McCollum is a producer; Georgia Engel, who started her acting career at Kennedy Theatre, has a supporting role (yep, she was Georgette on "The Mary Tyler Moore" show and was last seen in "Everybody Loves Raymond). ...

Merwin Foard, who was a magnificent Javert in "Les Miserables" here, is standby for the title character played by Michael Cerveris. And Angelique Ilo, who was Cassie in a 1985 production of "A Chorus Line" at the Honolulu Community Theatre (now the Diamond Head Theatre), is dance captain for "The Wedding Singer," a musical based on the Adam Sandler film. ...

Over breakfast at Carnegie Deli I caught up with Craig Schulman, who was Jean Valjean in "Les Miz" in Honolulu a couple of times, and most recently one of "The Three Phantoms" who performed at Hawai'i Theatre this year. He just completed a Taiwan tour of the "Phantoms" production. One of his co-stars, Cris Groenendaal, couldn't make a lunch date at Heartland Brewery at Union Square, but his wife, Sue Anderson, often the "Phantoms" accompanist, brought daughter Emily, before moving on to a "Rent" performance. ...

And that's Show Biz. ...

Show Biz is published Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach Wayne Harada at 525-8067, wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com or fax 525-8055.