MONEY, SEX, LOVE, ART & PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Anita Loomis is awfully cute. She has a boyish, almost impish quality that belies some of the darker aspects of her material. She’s lithe and quick, and she moves comfortably and expertly on a stage. She’s unapologetically feminist. She’s funny. And serious. And earnest as hell.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
But for all her cleverness and likability, Loomis’s Money, Sex, Love, Art & Public Transportation, her solo debut at Club Lower Links, is erratic at best. The five sections correspond to the subjects listed in the title, and Loomis hit her stride in the “love” portion, a poignant short story about her dying step-grandmother called “No Direct Relation.” Unfortunately it’s followed by “Success Is a [Hand] Job in New York,” a silly if not outright amateurish poke at artistic pretensions. The opening sequence for the entire piece, in which Loomis changes from casual clothes into her old prom dress, is also a disappointment. The literal changing of personas is severely overdone these days, and even Loomis’s charm couldn’t overcome the expectedness.
Consider: She’s a cool narrative voice in “$onic Rape” and in the vague little “sex” section, “Danger Girl.” In “Success” she depends on a stereotypically boorish and invented persona to describe her neurotic obsession with Andy Warhol. Even in the touching tale “No Direct Relation,” which deals with her step-grandmother’s impending chemotherapy and by extension her mortality, Loomis keeps her distance. Relating how the doctor has chosen her as the family member who should know the details of her step-grandmother’s cancer and treatment, Loomis remains strangely detached. In “Follow Me Boys,” the “public transportation” bit, Loomis comes closest to risk, but even here she focuses on her internal reaction to men’s continual propositions on the street, never to the possibility of actual danger.
