By Blake Green

It's the repetition that gets to James Naughton. Eight shows a week, a year-plus at a clip. It happened with 1990's hit musical "City of Angels" and more recently, with "Chicago." The Tony awards Naughton won for both have created the demand for a "James Naughton type" - i.e., ruggedly handsome with a dashing, wry style and a smooth, warm baritone -or, preferably, the real thing. He says he's batted away several recent offers to do another musical.

But it's always nice to be working, the 53-year-old actor says almost apologetically, all too aware of the tenuous aspects of show business. He also recognizes the irony: his new career venture is also eight times a week - for as long as he's lucky.

This time Naughton is trying a cabaret act, something he says he's postponed doing for a long time. Against the brick-wall backdrop of the Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 11 at City Center and accompanied by a quintet, he's singing an eclectic, highly personal selection of songs: Elvis, Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Hank Snow. The theme from "The City of Angels," but nothing from "Chicago."

"I couldn't do the 'Press Conference Rag without Ann Reinking on my knee," he says with the jauntiness of "Chicago" lawyer Billy Flynn. Naughton says that, after the City Center show completes its run, he wouldn t mind taking it national, and maybe to a larger Manhattan venue.

Having just survived a rainy afternoon traffic snarl en route from his 18th-Century Connecticut farmhouse, Naughton arrived a bit frazzled, his thick thatch of steel-gray hair covered by a baseball cap bearing the numerals 70. This, he explained, shedding his rain gear, was a souvenir of Rosemary Clooney's birthday celebration last month. It was also a reminder that he also got his musical director, John Oddo, from Clooney, as well as the chance to try out what's become his encore number - "The Folks on the Hill" - during her recent engagement at Rainbow and Stars.

He sings that song just after he's told his audience about a decision made more than 20 years ago, during a vacation to his New England roots, to move his family back east from Los Angeles, where he had gone to work. Something about "the smell of swamp maples just turning" in the early fall did it. "The Folks on the Hill" are a nice bunch, including his wife, Pam, a psychiatric social worker to whom he's been married 30 years, and two children, Greg and Keira, who've followed in their father's professional footsteps.

Naughton directed Greg in a production of "Filumena" last fall for off-Broadway's Blue Light Theatre Company, which the younger Naughton helped found. He also directed, as well as starred in, "Johnny on a Spot" last summer at Williamstown, Mass., and says this is another probable direction for his career. "The rehearsal process is where all the creativity comes from. I've always loved that, but then the play opens and you have to do it over and over again. When you direct, you don't have to do that. "

The direction of the cabaret act was a joint effort with Oddo. "My tastes go in many directions," Naughton says. "We've got another 50 songs that we couldn't fit into the evening, and one of the attractive things about this is that it can always change. It doesn't need to be repetitious."