Oak Harbor High School’s Drama Club has created a buzz with its latest production, “All My Sons.”

The play opened Feb. 12.

“It’s a very, very moving drama,” said drama teacher Chuck Smothermon. “It’s just a very involving play, and the students are doing a really beautiful job, and I’m really proud of them.”

Set a few years after World War II, the play’s main character, Joe Keller, struggles with his role in knowingly sending out faulty engine parts that caused 21 pilots to crash during the war.

The play takes the audience through the journey of this family as they learn of Keller’s secret and the repercussions.

(Below: Breanna Soto styles Haruka Tashiro’s hair for the play.)

“It’s a human drama,” Smothermon said. “It’s so relatable. It’s timeless in the emotion and the psychology that’s involved.”

“The characters are very complex.

“And I love that it lets us talk about many different issues that are relevant to their lives.”

Robert Harless plays a doctor named Jim Bayliss, a neighbor.

“It’s a play that at first you don’t really get until you get through the whole thing,” Harless said. “And, as you go on and watch it more and more, it gets really interesting and you realize more things about it.”

“A lot of high schools choose plays that are more general audience, kind of immature,” said student director Anna Kate Fahey. “But this one, it struck all of us because it was such adult content. We’d never gotten to do a play this deep with such dark matter.”

(Left: Scout Powell, an actress in ‘All My Sons,’ sits for hair and makeup for an upcoming performance.)

With only one performance left, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at the high school, the cast and crew have already received plenty of feedback, which Smothermon describes as “universally wonderful.”

“They all really liked it, and they all were really moved by it,” Fahey said of her friends who’ve seen the play.

“A lot of them were crying when I went to talk to them.”

“This year’s cast has just put so much work into this,” said public relations coordinator Kayla Nagel. “It’s one of the best we’ve ever done before. It’s a great cast to work with.”

“Sitting in the audience, I can feel the emotion that the audience has,” Smotherman said, “and feel that they’re having a shared experience with the cast as we go through the evening that is, at times, wrenching.

“And that’s a special experience.”

The cost of the play is $12 for adults and $7 for children 8-12 years of age.