POP MUSIC REVIEW : EURYTHMICS MAKE CONTACT

The fan standing and dancing at his aisle seat during Eurythmics’ Greek Theatre concert Monday felt a tap on his shoulder, and when he turned to see what was up he was surprised to find he’d been playfully tagged by Annie Lennox. By the time it registered, she was back on the stage after circumnavigating the entire orchestra section.

That was the show’s crowning gesture, and it illustrated Lennox’s consuming drive for serious contact with her audience.

The ramp jutting into the orchestra pit wasn’t enough for her, and the packed crowd that she’d invited up front earlier in the show had been cleared, so the only thing left to do was pick up her cordless mike, enlist a bodyguard, start bobbing to a calypso beat and go on a brazen stroll through the audience.

Lennox’s dance imperative was a a bit surprising, because she and her partner, Dave Stewart, are usually thought of as inventive pop hitmakers and/or clever, arty image-mongers, not a get-off-your-butts-and-boogie rock ‘n’ roll band.

But with guitarist Stewart (done up in his usual scruffy buccaneer duds) leading a stripped-down five-member band and Lennox breathing fire into the soul-flavored songs, that’s what they were.

Sort of, anyway. There was a degree of sophistication in the presentation and imagination in the music that took it beyond your garden-variety mindless boogie--though the mindless probably had a fine time too, as long as they went out to buy beer during the ballads.

Rather than cheapen or downplay the music, Lennox’s approach magnified its virtues. She was intent on elevating the show beyond just a good showcase of the songs, determined to create some real communication with her audience. That’s not easy to pull off for someone as theatrical as she is, but she made it seem pretty effortless.

During the course of Monday’s show she shifted personas repeatedly, going from a warm, intensely immediate performer to a stylized figure that almost became a prop--it was easy to imagine this small, lithe Peter Pan with the regal bearing as the figurehead on the prow of a galleon, as a porcelain figurine or as the hood ornament of a ‘30s limousine.

The songs encouraged this blend of the earthy and the ethereal, at one moment asking her to flit around singing about angels, the next to become a fiery soul shouter. She’d croon a sweet and celestial ballad with a transported expression and sweeping gestures, then stomp her feet and snap her neck with whiplash intensity on a hard-rocker.

Through every guise, she maintained a current of warmth and intelligence that peaked during the encore when she and backing singer Joniece Jamison teamed on Eurythmics’ feminist anthem “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves.”

As the duo’s musical mastermind, Stewart has a way of making their basically simple pop songs sound transfigured into something deeper, and there’s a tendency to look for profundity in them. But they usually turn out to be basically simple pop songs. They can be amusingly cryptic and funny, but more often they’re disarmingly straightforward expressions of love or loss, dressed up with imaginative touches but relying mostly on tough, spirited execution and the inherent radiance of Lennox’s vocals.

By the way, the band wasn’t the only thing that was stripped-down. Late in the show, Lennox left the stage, and when she came back her white blouse was gone and she looked as if she was ready to shoot a Maidenform commercial: “I dreamed I sang to 6,000 people in my. . . . “ Appropriately, the song was “Would I Lie to You?”

Eurythmics play their third night at the Greek on Thursday, then play the Pacific Amphitheatre on Saturday and San Diego State’s Open Air Theatre on Monday.