BERNADETTE'S ALBUM DOING WELL; BROADWAY NEXT?

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

The CD ``Sondheim, Etc.: Bernadette Peters Live at Carnegie Hall'' has taken off like gangbusters - and the Tony-winning actress/singer couldn't be more delighted or relieved about that fact.

``It's only been out two weeks and the stores are already restocking,'' she said. ``The Virgin store in New York sold out in the first week. You do your best and see what happens. I feel very blessed.''

Her first-ever concert CD, which will benefit the Gay Men's Health Crisis, comes in the wake of her ``I'll Be Your Baby Tonight'' recording of last summer. Before that there was a period of 14 years between recording gigs.

``The recording industry was changing, record companies wanted to do things that sold to kids - they asked me to do disco and I didn't want to do disco, or they wanted me to do '40s or '50s stuff. I didn't want to do something just because it fit into someone's niche of what they expected of me. Then, in the late '80s, someone from Angel/EMI saw me singing at a benefit and approached me about making an album - the kind of album I wanted to do. We started a recording, the producer left, I went off to do a Broadway show, and it ended up taking a long time to get going. But it was worth the wait.''

Sales of ``Sondheim, Etc.'' will no doubt be helped by Bernadette's heavy concert touring schedule.

Bernadette, who co-stars in NBC's May 18-19 ``The Odyssey'' miniseries, is in discussions about returning to Broadway in a musical, but says, ``I can't give any details away about that yet.'' She was last on the Great White Way in the 1992 musical ``The Goodbye Girl,'' which earned her a fifth Tony nomination.

Back in the viewfinder 

John Travolta has so captivated his ``Face Off'' on-screen boss, Harve Presnell, that the veteran performer has decided, ``If I didn't already have six children, I'd adopt him. He's centered, he's kind and he won't tolerate rudeness. Unfortunately, a lot of people in our industry act as if they're on high speed with no control. Travolta and Nicolas Cage come in and do their job on this picture, and leave all the crap to others.'' Presnell and Travolta also have an avid love of piloting airplanes in common. Plus they're both comeback kids.

The just-wrapped Paramount ``Face Off'' - in which Travolta plays a federal agent who goes undercover by surgically swapping faces with a terrorist - marks the sixth major project for Presnell since ``Fargo'' put fresh heat in his career. He's got ``Tears of Julian Poe'' with Christian Slater upcoming. Plus his showcase Saturday night as the until-now-unseen secret agent father of Andrea Parker on NBC's ``The Pretender.'' Identified with such classic movie musicals as ``The Unsinkable Molly Brown,'' Presnell says ``Fargo'' showed Hollywood's ``unimaginative thinkers, `Hey! He can talk. He doesn't have to sing.' ''

A call to disarm

Rapper/actor LL Cool J plans to use his appearance at tonight's taping of the 10th anniversary Essence Awards as a platform to implore an end to the violence between the ``gangs'' of East and West Coast artists. He's spent days preparing the speech that's been motivated by the recent murders of rap artists Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. The public will be able to hear his plea when the awards, which are being staged at the theater at Madison Square Garden, air as a two-hour special on the Fox Network in late May.

Playing it out

Handsome Dana Ashbrook, who meets with a crisis in tonight's cliffhanger episode of NBC's ``Crisis Center,'' sounds surprised when asked whether he intends to team on a project with real-life significant other Marisa Tomei.

``Yeah, sure. Someday we could work together. It would be nice,'' says the actor remembered for his evil ``Twin Peaks'' character. (He and Tomei have known each other for years, but have kept the relationship fairly quiet.) While he waits for word on ``Crisis Center's'' future, Ashbrook's keeping busy with sports, including golf - and playing third base on the same softball team on which ``Single Guy'' Jonathan Silverman serves as shortstop.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Bernadette Peters

Heavy concert tour

(2) LL Cool J

Plea to stop shooting