Low-Key Wopat Hazards Standards

Those Duke boys are doing all right.

John Schneider, who played Bo Duke 20 years ago on the CBS country comedy and car-chase caper “The Dukes of Hazzard,” now plays Superman’s adoptive father on the WB’s popular “Smallville,” while Tom Wopat, who played Luke Duke, has been amassing stage credits, notably as co-star of the late-’90s Broadway revival of “Annie Get Your Gun.”

Now, Wopat--a velvety, virile baritone--is exploring a recording and cabaret career that brought him to the Orange County Performing Arts Center Thursday to sing in the smooth, uninflected style of ‘50s and ‘60s jazz, which he tried out a year and a half ago on the album “The Still of the Night.” Opening his four-day engagement in the center’s intimate nightclub space, Founders Hall, Wopat evoked Vegas back in the days when Frankie, Sammy and Joey owned the town.

Wopat’s take on this style is so restrained and predictable that pretty soon, Harold Arlen’s “Let’s Fall in Love” began to sound just like Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” which sounded like Cole Porter’s “In the Still of the Night.” If Wopat wants to succeed in the cabaret world, he would do well to take a step back toward acting and connect more emotionally with each song. If he can recapture the irresistible combination of swagger and vulnerability that he lent to the Frank Butler character in “Annie Get Your Gun,” so much the better.

In performance, as on the album, he was most in touch with a pair of Jimmy Webb tunes: “The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress” and “If These Walls Could Speak,” his voice sweeping through the songs like a lonesome wind across a prairie.

Venturing from the album, he tried to have fun though still proved awfully strait-laced with Bob Dorough and Dave Frish- berg’s “I’m Hip,” Wardell Gray and Annie Ross’ “Twisted” and a fast-tempo version of Jerome Kern’s “I Won’t Dance,” propelled by Ted Firth on piano, Don Kasper on bass and Peter Grant on drums.

Tom Wopat appears at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 and Sunday at 7 p.m. $46 and $49. (714) 740-7878.