Death Tests Family Ties : Theater: ‘Being of Sound Mind’ explores the complex relationships of two brothers and a father who come together again during a time of mourning.

“You can say or do anything in a family,” insists playwright Greg Suddeth, whose newest work, “Being of Sound Mind,” is running at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks. “There’s no love like it. Of course, you also tend to hurt each other; you go from loving each other to death, to wanting to kill each other. Although the people in this play are Irish-Americans, it could be any passionate family.”

Set in Des Moines, Iowa, the story centers on a young man, Dillon, who has returned to the family home for his mother’s funeral--and finds himself unearthing old grudges and creating some new wounds with his older brother and womanizing, alcoholic father.

“What I wanted to express was how the true colors of a family come out when you lose someone so primary,” explained Suddeth, 38. “Everyone’s waiting to see who’s going to throw the first punch.”

It’s not an unfamiliar setting for the playwright. Although “this isn’t autobiographical,” he says, “it’s the closest I’ve ever drawn on my own life.”

Indeed, Suddeth’s family is Irish-American; they live in Iowa; his mother died; he has complicated relationships with his older brother and father. What Suddeth calls “Irish melancholy” is at the core of his often pessimistic perspective, he says.

Yet director Anthony Barcao, who has known the playwright more than a dozen years and who has staged two of his previous works, thinks Suddeth’s point of view is a valuable one.

“It’s stuff we can all relate to,” said Barcao, 38, whose Immediate Theatre Company also produced Wendy Hammond’s “The Ghostman” earlier this year at the Harman Avenue Theatre. “And it’s a message people need to hear. We tend to get caught up in the larger issues in the world and forget that family is the core. This play says ‘Love people while they’re here, because that’s all there is.’ ”

Suddeth takes on another close-to-home issue in his next play, “End of the Watch,” which he received a Rockefeller grant to develop for the Cast Theatre.

The story, which opens with a cop standing at the grave site of a man he’s shot, was written long before the Rodney King incident and draws on the real-life police experiences of a childhood friend of Suddeth’s: “It’s about taking someone’s life--and how that affects everyone else’s life around him.”

Earlier Suddeth plays include “Mine Enemies,” “In the Bargain,” “Toe to Toe” and “Very Cherry and Extra Clean,” all dealing with some disquieting aspect of man in society. “I guess you could say my work is a little dark,” concedes the playwright. “OK, very dark.”

Suddeth traces his earliest literary forays to grade school.

“I used to write fake book reports--on books that didn’t exist,” he says proudly. “I was not exactly a hungry reader. Then when I was 17, I read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and it turned me around.” He began writing short stories, saying, “I wasn’t ready for a novel.”

Eventually he picked up a bachelor’s degree in history and sampled a grab-bag of careers: sports coach, teacher of the emotionally disturbed, and stand-up comic. He says of the last job, “I still have nightmares about that.”

Nowadays, Suddeth attributes his sanity to his wife, explaining, “If I were me, I don’t think I would’ve stayed married to me.”

He says he is content to segue between acting, writing and directing: “It’s what I’m here to do.”

“Being of Sound Mind” plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays at the Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, until Nov. 24. Admission $15. Call (213) 660-8587.