NORWICH – Religion is a big deal - or not - and changing to please your partner’s family is a bad idea in the original play that a group of Norwich High School students presented last week in the school’s auditorium.
“The Last Supper,” produced by teacher Richard Bernstein’s drama class, features a present-day couple facing the end of their seven year-long relationship during a Lenten Friday meal whilst flashbacks from earlier periods demonstrate conflict with Jacob’s conventional mother and, ultimately, each other. Comic relief offered by an earnest waiter and witty word play reminiscent of Oscar Wilde lightens the personal introspection and heavy religious overtones.
“It’s the first time a class play had a really strong ending,” Bernstein proudly said afterward, referring to the annual play that all of his drama class students are required to create and perform at the end of the term.
While Grady Thompson, as the very funny, but steadfast Jacob, has the last line, the play kept the audience interested and left them wondering whether his girlfriend, Sarah - played by the angry conformist Breanna Guiffre - will actually walk out of their relationship for good this time. Sarah left twice before after being humiliated by Jacob’s incredibly rude mother, Joan (played by Tori Russell).
To the backdrop of a sudden, Hell-fire in the restaurant’s kitchen, Jacob says: “Sarah, you walk away from everything. But I’m here. I’m always here. You always come back.”
Jacob’s devotion to Sarah and tolerance of her unhappiness evokes a more mature relationship, that of a married couple experiencing mid life crises. Sarah wants to take a break to “clear her head” and make the most of the next eight months before what she fears could be the end of the world, if the Mayan 2012 prophesy is correct. She has changed her life for Jacob and wants to take some time now to “find out who I am and not who you and I were” before the end of the world creeps up on her.
Guiffre might not have realized it when she delivered her lines, but they came across like a hormonal woman in her 50s: “We’ve been living. Every once in a while I go to Lowe’s and buy a can of paint and a throw rug and it’s not fun. I want to write my book, I want to sing on stage, I want to, I don’t know, run away with the circus or something.”
Jacob, who follows the scripture of St. Paul to the Corinthians about love bearing, hoping and enduring all things, makes light of Sarah’s angst and potential departure: “You’re only saying that because you just read Water for Elephants,” and “... so you’re saying we’ve been together for seven years now, we’ve been living together for one year, and you’re willing to throw it all away for a bunch of Indians?”
The couple fall in love at 17; Sarah meets Jacob’s parents, Joan and Noah (played by Justin Sawyer), and by the end of that meeting (another Lenten Friday dinner) Sarah, in order to please Jacob’s family, begins “doing right things for all the wrong reasons.” She orders fish when she wants chicken, wears fancy clothes because Joan does, and takes a full time teaching position when she only meant to substitute. She does this despite Joan criticizing her smoking, her weight, her drinking, her language and her morals.
After ordering wine, the 17-year-old self-indulgent version of Sarah, played by Casey Marson, defends her underage drinking: “Well I’m not over here getting hammered or driving or being stupid or anything. I’m just having a drink because I like the taste, Jesus Christ!” Marson leaves the table during the first round of insults. Later, the 23 year-old Sarah, played by Natasha Brower, wants to impress Joan by volunteering at a soup kitchen and using china to celebrate the couple’s moving in together. When Joan bashes her for wanting to serve hot dogs and a steamed bag of vegetables on china, Sarah leaves with a headache.
But the potential daughter-in-law comes back both times, eventually succumbing to Joan’s motto: “Life’s a struggle for adaptation.”
Sawyer creates a father figure character who uses sarcasms and a little help from Jack Daniels to endure the women’s drama. He demonstrates the patience that husbands of traditional faith are taught to exhibit. He is “just...just there,” explains his son. Orion Shea plays the funny waiter, and gets hearty laughs despite his brief appearances as a robot and Adolph Hitler.
Ian Weaver and John Mooney, who play Jacob at 17 and 23, respectively, take turns defending their girlfriend in the face of Joan’s haughtiness. They support her for “being her own person” and tell her not to change for their mother. “Don’t worry about my mother. ... I don’t think she’s ever actually met someone who she likes,” says Weaver as Jacob. And later, when Joan admonishes Sarah’s smoking:
Joan: “I thought I smelled smoke when she came in. I would prefer not to have her dirty ashes all over my new car.”
Jacob: “But, Mom, you didn’t seem to mind the ashes on Wednesday,” as he reaches for her forehead.
Even though Jacob mocks his mother’s faith and is sarcastic about Sarah’s, the play’s theme and all of its characters espouse morality, whether it’s Christian or of the Mayan variety. Jacob, especially, remains glued to Corinthians and his father’s traditional example.
Jacob’s joking and the struggle to define herself within the context of their relationship gets the best of Sarah, however. Sarah says she fell for Jacob because he was the first person in her life who liked her “for exactly who I am,” but she complains that they’ve “grown too familiar with each other” and that she can hear Jacob “with my mind’s eye.” Jacob retorts: “Well what’s the goal of any relationship then? To grow further apart?” and “Did you know that millions of years ago we actually had a third eye on the top of our head. It was right here, you feel that soft spot?”

Jacob: “Are you saying it wasn’t worth it?”
Sarah: “No, I don’t know. It seems like lately we’ve reached a fork in the road.
“Jacob: “Right now, I’m more worried about a fork in my fish.”
Sarah: “I’m not even going to validate that with a response.”
Jacob: “But in saying that, you are validating it with a response about not validating it with a response.”
Thompson’s character is just so real. His multiple word plays, notwithstanding the ending, brings to mind Wilde’s, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ a farcical comedy in which the protagonists do everything they can to escape burdensome social obligations: ”I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”