‘J for J’: A Sibling’s Duty, a Small Miracle

“Take care of him,” “Watch out for her,” a parent says to a child, and with those words, a brother or sister goes from being a mere annoyance to a daunting responsibility.

This obligation has fallen heavily on actress, director and, now, writer Jenny Sullivan, who, since girlhood, has been looking out for a developmentally disabled older brother. Pondering their relationship in her autobiographical show “J for J,” she considers how duty has tied her in knots through the years, yet bound her more closely to her brother as well as to her parents.

In Ventura, where the Rubicon Theatre Company is presenting the show’s world premiere, Sullivan tells her story with the assistance of John Ritter as her brother, John, and Jeff Kober (“China Beach”) as her father, film and TV actor Barry Sullivan. Making unbilled appearances are each audience member’s own family members, who quietly join the action as Sullivan’s tale transforms from the specific to the universal.

The genesis for Sullivan’s story is a journal kept by her father, who acted in such movies as “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “Jeopardy.” Although he could come across as a tough guy on screen, he proved achingly vulnerable in the journal, which Jenny discovered after his death.

Labeled “J for J,” or “Journal for Johnny,” it contained letters from father to son and, after Jenny’s birth, to both children. In these secret missives, Barry confided his worries about John, and gently implored Jenny to watch over him.

Jenny weaves excerpts from the journal into a conversation across time--an expressionistic quality echoed in Hugh Landwehr’s scenic design, which sends angled, pitch-black walls bursting through a conventional brick wall. Oversized windows throw blue-pink moonlight onto the proceedings, courtesy of Kathi O’Donohue’s lighting.

Toward the beginning of the intermission-less, 95-minute show, the writing bogs down in Jenny’s own sometimes tortured prose. Gradually, though, she lets the journal speak more and more for itself, enabling her father’s words--unassuming yet gracefully poetic--to blossom with meaning.

Jenny--perhaps best known for directing the premiere of Jane Anderson’s “The Baby Dance”--returns to acting with a performance that vibrates with vulnerability and need. Kober answers her in kind, capturing a father’s quiet angst and steady resilience.

The real magic occurs, however, when Ritter’s John joins the dialogue. Absorbed in a private world of tics and grimaces, John tends to get stuck on one thought, and his words are often at odds with the ongoing conversation. Yet his seeming non sequiturs often reveal themselves as delightfully witty jokes. In a dignified, wholly convincing performance, Ritter confirms the gift for sharp characterization that he demonstrated as the friend and father figure in the movie “Sling Blade.”

Gently drawn together under Jon Lawrence Rivera’s direction, “J for J” emerges as a quiet little miracle of a show and a story about families everywhere.

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“J for J,” Rubicon Theatre Company at the Laurel Theatre, 1006 E. Main St., Ventura. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 4. $23-$38. (805) 667-2900. Running time: 95 minutes.