Over the weekend, the San Diego Symphony Summer Pops was as corny as Kansas in August and as entracingly dark as "Music of the Night".

That's because the program was "Broadway, Just Off Broadway", a compilation of show tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein plus Andrew Lloyd Webber that featured Bravo Broadway!, a trio of touring Broadway veterans consisting of Jan Horvath, Michael Maguire and Doug LaBrecque.

The singers presented solos, duets and ensemble numbers with engaging professionalism, as if Broadway wasn't just a place but a state of mind. Musical theater prevailed, enhanced by pre-taped interviews, live video images and historic Broadway photos seen on the pops' new screen.

The program's first half included Rodgers and Hammerstein hits from "Oklahoma!", The King and I" and "South Pacific" (with those lyrics about Kansas in August). After intermission came favourites from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats", "Evita" and "Phantom of the Opera".

Some listeners may have wished for the wit of Cole Porter. Or the intricacies of Stephen Sondheim. Yet with this program, let by former National Symphony associate conductor Randall Craig Fleischer, the accent was often enjoyably on mass appeal.

A replica of the Statue of Liberty stood near the stage. Actors from El Cajon's Christian Community Theater dressed as characters in musicals and mingled with the audience.

On Friday, the Tony Award winning Maguire commended those who put the symphony back in business and urged audience members to bring friends to fill the venue's empty seats. The Symphony Summer Pops wouldn't say how many tickets were sold, declining a request for a box office figure. From the looks of the 2,4891-seat facility, attendance wasn't quite as strong as the previous Friday's near-capacity series opener.

But audience enjoyment was plentiful. Part-chanteuse and part show-biz blitzkrieg, Horvath summoned pathos in "Evita" and flirty girlishness in "Flower Drum Song". LaBrecque excelled in "Phantom of the Opera", bringing fervent, sensuous tones - and a well-pitched falsetto passage - to "Music of the Night".

Since this was only the second of eight weekends of pops porgramming, the orchstra still sounded more like a collection of gifted individuals than a tightly blended ensemble. But give it time.

The symphony, whose last official pops series was three years ago, is boun to banish the kind of semi-ragged playing that diminished the impact of the "Carousel Waltz". Better was the suite from "Evita", which benefited from the percussion section's vibrant instrumentation.

Conductor Fleischer and the orchestra supplied reasonably adroit accompaniment to such selections as the title song from "Sunset Boulevard", which Maguire sang with admirable clarity. Maguire and LaBrecque also orged the vampy Horvath during "South Pacific"'s "Nothin' Like a Dame", whose humor defies political correctness.

"We know the lyrics may seem a bit dated," said Maguire, "but we didn't write 'em."

No, but they sang them with up-to-date conviction.