Just Like Any Family : ‘The Liquidation of Granny Peterman’ deals with relatives who must divvy up possessions of recently departed grandmother.

Family values take a turn for the worst in Samuel Bernstein’s “The Liquidation of Granny Peterman�--currently in its world premiere at the Burbank Little Theatre.

The story of four siblings and a grandson who gather to divvy up the possessions of their recently departed grandmother “was inspired by a friend who had an actual Granny Peterman,� explained the Texas-born Bernstein, 28, who originally developed the piece as a short story in 1981. “She told me about her grandmother who was in a nursing home, was very ill and was never going to get out. Her children decided to sell the house and began bitterly feuding over her possessions,� he said.

Here, the upper-class family has gathered in the grandmother’s New York brownstone. The four children include Lorna, 45, who’s been put in charge of overseeing the distribution; mid-thirtyish Euphemia; Kiki, 32-year-old mother of four; 30-year-old Basil; and Max, 24, the son of a fifth sibling, Sara, who died giving birth to him.

Bernstein, who’s worked for Equity Fights AIDS for the past year, admits to being “a little writing person early on--but mainly an actor.� At 10 he was performing in community theater; at 11, he did seven shows a week for three plays in a row--for a full year. At 17 he moved to New York and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, supplementing his acting income as a waiter “and all those funny jobs.�

Resettling in Los Angeles in 1985, Bernstein began refashioning the Granny Peterman story into a play. “The focus became this family’s struggle to be a family in a real way,� he said. “The hope is they come together through this experience--but it’s not an easy process.� Although the play was optioned in New York in 1988, it never made it to the stage. At the same time, ironically, Bernstein’s mother was dying of cancer.

“It factors in a great deal,� said the playwright, whose parents split when he was 4. “This is not autobiographical. But some of the issues of laying blame do come to the fore. I’ve always been estranged from my father, and I guess what I finally hold against him is that he’s alive and my mother is not.� He paused. “Let’s just say I got a lot of material from my childhood. I don’t buy into the idea that you have to be tortured to be an artist. But I do believe that your best work comes from your greatest pain.�

Still, he’s not sure if he’d classify his play as a comedy or a drama.

“These are funny people,� Bernstein stressed, “and they talk to each other in funny ways. But the way they deal with each other is also charged with emotion. I don’t mean to take anybody’s experience and be flippant, but people who have seen this tell me it’s just like their relatives--not so much the scavenging of possessions, but the constant shifts in sides. Everything’s fine, then it turns on a dime.�

Director Sandra Fleck was impressed by that realism. “The characters are people I know,� she said, “mild versions of people in my family. There’s a lot of love buried--sometimes very deep, which happens when you can’t communicate your true feelings. The other nice thing is that these characters change and grow over the course of the play. None of them is totally bad, and none is totally perfect.�

Where and When

What: “The Liquidation of Granny Peterman.�

Location: Burbank Little Theatre, George Izay Park, 1100 Clark Ave., Burbank.

Hours: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 1.

Price: $12.

Call: (818) 954-9858.