Sullivan’s Travels 

In something of a coincidence, Ventura’s Rubicon Theatre also stages a poetic, powerful and poignant family story, J for J – theater veteran Jenny Sullivan’s semi-autobiographical memory play about her relationship with her developmentally disabled older brother, Johnny. The title comes from a phrase her father – famed Hollywood actor Barry Sullivan (The Great Gatsby, The Tall Man) wrote in a journal when she was born. The obligation was supposed to work the other way around, but instead Jenny bore the awesome, sometimes awful duty of being responsible for another’s physical and emotional well-being, and the play explores the ache and anger of “not being enough”, as well as the strange, sweet surprise of being loved at an unexpected moment. 

Rubicon first produced the work in 2001 when Jenny Sullivan starred with Jeff Kober and the late John Ritter, the L.A. Times praising the play as “a quiet little miracle of a show about families everywhere.” Kober returns for the pair of staged readings on February 3 & 4 that also star Eric Lange and Nancy Travis as a benefit for RTC.