SPARKS – Reed High School drama teacher Laurence Ollivier brags about how the student actors and technical crew are a close-knit bunch and credits the Reed’s spring production’s success to working well together.

“My kids are like family,” he said. “It creates a sense of intimacy among the performers in a high school setting.”

The play, “The Whole Town’s Talking,” was presented on Friday and Saturday and has two more shows tonight and Tuesday at 7 p.m. for audiences to catch in case they missed it this weekend.

The play was written by John Emerson and Anita Loos in 1926. The story is set in 1925 Sandusky, Ohio in the home of Henry and Harriett Simmons, played by Reed students Jacob Roberts and Ashton Williams.

In the play, the Simmons welcome home their college daughter, Ethel, played by Irene Doughty, who brings home a fellow student, Roger Shields, portrayed by Nathan Kyte. But Henry has plans for his daughter to marry Chester Binney, his business partner (played by Zach South). Ethel disdains her father’s notion of her marrying a local, “small town yokel,” as the play’s program describes. To overcome her resistance, Henry plots to stage an affair between Chester and the most famous starlet of the day, Reed student Anna Shcherbak’s Letty Lythe. Further complicating the story, Harriet thinks Henry is having an affair.

Though the play was adapted for film in 1935 starring Katherine Hepburn and directed by John Ford, Ollivier said the play has seemed to drop off from the face of drama.

“No one holds the rights to this play anymore, which is strange because it has lots of witty dialogue,” he said.

The play welcomes experienced and amateur students actors, including Shcherbak, an exchange student from Ukraine. She arrived in the United States at the end of August and returns home on June 17. So far, her experiences at school and with her host family have been amazing, she said.

Shcherbak said she had to apply through a fairly rigorous program to be selected to study in America. She now plays Lythe and has received friendly support from her counterparts.

“I had a lot of help from the cast to understand her character,” she said. “I have to be her … and not be too much of a diva. … The cast is like family.”

Williams and Doughty, in addition to being cast members, are also student directors. Doughty said from that perspective, she’s had to learn how to take charge and yet be supportive if the actors or crew need help. The experience will help her since her ambition is to become a psychologist for the military.

“The cast is extremely close,” Doughty said. “I’m here for them and … to listen to them without yelling and knowing what to do if they need help. We haven’t had any trouble with chemistry.”

Though Ollivier quips about sharing a similar name to famous British actor Laurence Olivier, he said his own acting and teaching comes from a different perspective than most other educators. Now he’s in his fourth year at Reed, but Ollivier once taught college-level English and humanities. So when he explored scripts for his classes back then, it was from a literary, not a dramatic, point of view. Ollivier said he now enjoys focusing on the material from a production perspective.

Ollivier said he was glad for discovering “The Whole Town’s Talking” because it harnesses the strengths of the Reed drama program in comedic acting.

“I love the script and I thought, ‘How can a script have been so forgotten?’ ” he said.

The three-act play with an intermission has two more shows tonight and Tuesday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8 for center seats and $5 for the sides and can be purchased at Reed High School.