FAMILY DRAMA.(The Talk of the Town)

Charlotte d'Amboise, the Broadway veteran of such shows as "Chicago" and "Sweet Charity," stands onstage without moving for the first hour of "A Chorus Line," the revival that recently opened at the Schoenfeld Theatre. "Then I have twelve continuous minutes of solo, dancing across the whole stage," she said the other day. "I do a lot of pirouettes, high kicks, back layouts--very athletic," she said. "Waiting an hour to move is hard. I always want to rub my neck." She was standing, barefoot, in the kitchen of the town house in Harlem that she bought a few years ago with her husband, the actor Terrence Mann. There was an hour before she had to leave for the theatre. She had on jeans and a T-shirt and was filling a couple of bowls with hot oatmeal at a large granite counter. Nearby, on the walls, were framed Hirschfeld caricatures--one of Mann as Javert in "Les Miserables" (1987) and one of her as Anita from "West Side Story" in "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" (1989). Her daughters, Shelby, three, and JoJo, four, were noisily racing around the kitchen on bicycles with training wheels. Both were barefoot, Shelby in a tiny black lace tutu, JoJo in a princess nightgown.

"I also do some belting in the show," d'Amboise said. "I'm a belter." She gave a quick demonstration:

Give me somebody to dance for.

Give me somebody to show.

Let me wake up in the morning,

To find I have somewhere exciting to goooo.

She served the oatmeal to the children.