Waco Tribune-Herald from Waco, Texas • 17

iyih Leisure Guide2B Tune in Tonight3B IWACOURIBUNBHERALD I PAGE IB I FRIDAY! ANB3 020041 I Path to HDTV not hooray! Hippodrome celebrates 90th year with 3 touring productions Slow, expensive shift to digital signals still meeting resistance By CARL HOOVER Tribune-Herald entertainment editor When the New England Patriots free off against the Carolina Panthers this Sunday in the Super Bowl on CBS, several thousand Central Texas viewers will watch it in stunning detail, thanks to high definition television. The trouble is, for area TV and cable executives eager to stimulate viewer transition from analog television to HD, there are tens of thousands of viewers who wont be watching it on the digital format Television manufacturers, networks and cable providers have focused on the Super Bowl for several years in hopes of persuading TV set Sm HDTV, Pag SB Tony Awardwinning Titanic: The Musical opens a three-production celebration of die Waco Hip-omeT' inlay. Staff photo Duane A. Lavarty 1 1. Susan (Jessica Kitchens) finds a new relationship with Tony (Brad Harris) In Baylors Woman In Mind.

By CARL HOOVER Tribune-Herald entertainment editor The Waco Hippodrome Theatre marks Its 90th birthday next week with a celebration befitting the theater's more recent history as a performing arts stage: three Broadway musicals in six days. Or, as a showman might have hawked in the theaters early days as a vaudeville house and motion picture theater, Three Broadway musicals in six The theater, whose renovation and reopening in 1987 helped focus the revitalisation of downtown Waco, marks its ninth decade of entertaining Waco audiences on Feb. 6. While the building housed motion picture audiences for much of its life, its now the home of fee Waco Performing Arts Alliance, the joint operation of the Waco Performing Arts Company and the Lyric Opera of Waco. In planning this years season, board president Brian Bivona and programming chairman David McElreath opted to bring three Broadway tours to the Hippodrome stage.

Titanic: The Musical opens the triple bill at 730 p.m. Saturday, followed by Meredith Willson's The Unsinkable Molly Brown at 730 p.m. Monday and Cole Porters Kiss Me Kate at 730 p.m. Thursday. For actor Dan Marshall, 24, who plays the ships wireless operator Harold Bride in the national tour of Titanic that plays Waco on Saturday, the musical focuses more on individuals than die tragedy, the famous 1912 sinking of the passenger liner by an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean.

Like Jesus Christ everyone knows the ending, he quipped. The musical, which won five 1996 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Musical Score, sets up the stories of several sets of passengers on the luxury liner in the tint halt then fellows how they cope with the stunning news that the Titanic is sinking. "This shows about hope, ultimately, Marshall explained. It's about real peo- pie and how they deal with their lives. Marshall, a 2002 graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College, described his character asa very sweet man in love with the telegraph machine.

Representing the latest technology of its day, the wireless device alerted the outside world to the Titanics plifdit, but help arrived too late. Marshall said Maury Yestons score features several wonderful duets, with orchestral tracks recorded by the Polish National Symphony backing the 23-person cast Titanic also will feature Abbott -youth Damian Lassetter, a member of the Waco Childrens Theater who performed in the WCTs "Santas Millions last December at the Hippodrome. Lassetter will play the child of one of the couples on the passenger ship. The Titanic also forma the closing scenes of the next musical at the Hippodrome, The Unsinkable Molly Brown. There the plucky tide character, the wife of a Colorado millionaire, finds herself among the women and children lucky enough to board a lifeboat True to form, Brown rallies the spirits of those rescued with her, finding hope in the midst of tragedy.

Every time we run through ihl show, I discover a lot more of Molly Brown in me, laughed Stacy Moscotti, who plays the lead in the national tour. The Philadelphia native grew up a tomboy who always wanted to play soccer with the guys," a spirit not far mines Brit humor in Woman a Py CARL HOOVER Tribune-Herald entertainment editor S' 1 JiA garden rake normally brings order, but in Alan Ayckbourns dark fiomedy Woman In Mind, it unlocks adisorderwithin. When Susan, a vicars wife, has an accident with a rake, the line between reality and her imagination gets jolted- The life and family she'd like to have start to replace what she has, with results both comic and sobering. For director Terrence Zeeman, the challenge In the Baylor Theatre production of the Ayckbourn comedy lies in balancing the fantastical an umbrella that turns Into a tree, a bush that doubles as a horse with the' way shes mistreated by her family Sm WOMAN, Page 4B WB -ye sw-wr BBfc Ml UNSINKABLE MOLL YUROAVH" FEB 2 7S2TSZ07 See 90TH, Page 4B 4 Staff photo Mustratlon Katty Lwnona It girl Johansson scores below average names a big season MOVIE REVIEW The Perfect Scon Rated PG-13. Profanity, sex uality, drug references.

1 hour, 33 minutes. Playing at Wallace Jewel 16 ana Star- plex Galaxy 16. Teen flick settles for far-from-perfect formulaic plot By MELINDA ENNIS Cox News Service- The Perfect Score gets some passing grades for acting, but ultimately flunks the fiwwi. Starring the "it" girl of the moment, Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation, Girl With a Pearl Earring), in a rale she signed on for before she became "it, the plot revolves around a group of high school seniors scheming to steal SAT test questions. This dubious plan is justified in the film by the underlying assertion that the SAT is an unfair, racially and sexually biased barometer that guts undue pressure on crime is his buddy, Matty (Bry-.

an Greenberg, the WB show One Tree whose university yearnings are focused on joining the girlfriend who has left him behind for the University of Maryland. The pair recruits four other students to help break into (he Educational Standards Testing building where the SAT tests are produced, conveniently located in their neighborhood of Princeton, NJ The groups academic (and acting) abilities are as diverse as their predictably varied ethnicity. This Breakfast Clublsh crew includes Anna (Erika Christensen, Traffic), a pretty, straight-A achieve- Desmond (NBA star Darius. Miles), an African-American basketball See SCORE, Pag4B Sinatra Perlman Expected to draw filgerowds 1 By CARL HOOVER nbune-Herak! entertainment editor mV The Waco Symphony Orchestras 20044)5. season, which Opens Sept 27 with master violinist Itzhak Perlman, won't lack fin: star power with Frank Sinatra pianist Barry Douglas and double bassist Edgar Meyer on the concert schedule.

The WSO announced its upcoming season in the pro-' grams given to concertgoers Thursday night In Edition to Pejlman, whose appearance on the WSO calendar has sparked almost 100 calls from those seeking tickets, the Waco orchestra will per form with Meyer on Nov. Sinatra on March 31, 2005; and Douglas on April 29, 2005. An Evening of Romance, an aH-instrumental concert on March 5, the return of Tchaikovskys "The Nutcracker with Ballet Austin on Nov. 21 and the WSOs holiday pope concert on Dec. 10 round out the upcoming season.

Susan Taylor, executive director of the Waco Symphony Association, said the mmmiinl. tys warm response to the Joshua Bell concert opening this years season played a part in the high profile artists secured for next season. promising teens. Despite -the serious subject matter, director Brian Robbins cant decide if this is a drama, a satin or an American Restyle teen spool, and the film dissolves into a shapeless, weightless mass. Kyle (Chris Evans, Not Another Teen Movie) is a 3.7 GPA student whose determined dreams of a Cornell architecture degree are stymied by a respectable but imperfect PSAT.

performance. His cohort in Master violinist Itzhak Perlmans appearance on the WSO calendar ha sparked lamost 100 call from, ticket-seekers. We saw what a success Joshua Bell was, selling a lot of tickets to people who normally dont go to concerts," she said. See WSO, PagefiB.