So you missed David Copperfield when he was breaking box office records at the Martin Beck Theatre last year? Well, folks in the New York area are getting another chance to see the magic extravaganza. Copperfield will do four performances of Dreams & Nightmares: An Intimate Evening Of Grand Illusion Dec. 19-20 at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in suburban Long Island.

Playwright David Ives (All in the Timing) and director Francis Ford Coppola helped the magician with the script for the show, which uses Copperfield's youthful dreams and nightmares as the framework for his magic tricks.

Dreams marked Copperfield's Broadway debut, and he made the most of it by including many of the illusions developed during a previous North American tour, "The Magic Of David Copperfield," but with a greatly enhanced physical production and script. To help, Copperfield brought aboard Ives to adapt the touring show and Coppola, the master filmmaker responsible for The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula and the musical Finian's Rainbow. Coppola is credited with coming up with the new title for the show.

Copperfield reportedly was influenced by seeing Bob Fosse's Pippin -- the "Magic To Do" musical -- when he was a young man, and said he regarded Broadway as a career pinnacle.

David Copperfield's Dreams & Nightmares broke a Broadway box office record by selling $6-plus million in tickets for its five-week run at the Martin Beck Theatre, Newsweek magazine had reported. For tickets and information on Dreams & Nightmares at Nassau Coliseum in Hempstead, Long Island, call (516) 888-9000.

Copperfield isn't the only magician returning to the New York area at holiday time, by the way. Joseph Gabriel, whose Magic On Broadway played more than half a year at the Lamb's Theatre in 1996, returns Nov. 26 to that Off-Broadway venue for an engagement through (at least) Jan. 3, 1998.