As we all settle in for meals with loved ones over the holiday, we mustn’t forget one time we were invited to a dinner of our lifetimes. This past summer, my hearty group of 8 players (including myself) entered Quest Tavern excited to see what was in store for us, having heard buzz about this part-puzzle, part-immersive theatre escape room. We had a great time playing through The Last Supper, as we improvised through interactions with the main actor and solved puzzles. I truly enjoyed the concept for the room from its structure to campy, demonic possession plotline, though I found myself wishing for a more perfect execution. On the whole, the room offers a fun themed experience featuring improvisational moments of creative actor interaction.
At the start of our experience, the lobby and entry to the room unexpectedly stood out. Our game master seemed genuinely excited to talk with us about the rooms we’d done before and got us hyped up for our game. We also had a smooth transition from the game master directly telling us the rules, to inhabiting a themed character of Lord Garrick’s servant, to walking us to the room and introducing us to our host. This eased us from the rules-learning headspace into the actor-improvisation headspace
Once we entered the banquet hall, we met Lord Garrick. From our first interactions, it became clear we could play around in this space with him. As a large group of experienced improvisers, I did get the sense that we were testing his limits a bit. Several moments led to fun exchanges of jokes between us, but at times it sometimes felt we were abruptly brought back on track or like it took him a second to think of a response. Given the size and energy of our group, we found this aspect of the experience overall enjoyable, though moments here and there could have been more skillfully handled.
I also wished there was a bit more to work off of within the improvisational structure. Going into the room, we had been instructed to butter up the lord so that we could get him to leave the room, giving us space to conduct an investigation. When we met him, he gave us a rule of, essentially, not interrupting or speaking out of turn. Within this, it felt very easy to disobey and create improvisational moments through playful disruptions of his rules and through upsetting him, but less easy to butter him up through silent obedience. One of my friends checked in after the experience about if he was being too disruptive with his interruptions. Had there been space to positively interact I might have felt differently, but given that negative disruptions felt like the main space of improvisation, I didn’t mind the way he played the game. But I did wish the game felt like it had a couple of different tactical paths. The structure did provide some fun moments of improvisational prompts, with a couple open-ended tasks wherein we needed to creatively problem solve to get something from the actor.
After our initial actor interaction, the actor left the room and we were free to explore and solve puzzles. It felt like a spiritual successor to 60out’s Miss Jezebel room. Given the comparison this invites, I did wish for stronger cues in this room as to when our actor would be returning. On the whole, though, I really enjoy this structure of alternating puzzle-solving and improvisation. I also appreciated how this room structured a climactic puzzle-solving sequence surrounding breaking the structure and pretense. It gave us a dramatic push into the final moments of the room. The puzzles themselves mostly stick out positively, fitting in with the campy horror themes of the room and providing a level of difficulty.
On the whole, The Last Supper provides a fun, improvisational escape room experience. As I’ve alluded to, we definitely had too many people at the room’s capacity, and everyone would have had more to do improvisationally and in terms of puzzle-solving with a smaller headcount. In my experience, I’ve found escape rooms best at half capacity for groups of hands-on puzzle solvers, and I’d say that holds true for this room as well. The improvisational space creates potential for people to come in with their own characters or as themselves; I could definitely see a group enjoying coming in as their D&D party. The other booking consideration I’d mention is the room does have horror elements in it -- not as strongly as a horror room where actors chase you, but there’s a couple of tense or jump scare moments that those looking for an entirely adventure-themed experience may not enjoy as much.
Editor’s Note: This review was written after playing Quest Tavern’s Last Supper escape room in August 2023. More information including booking can be found on their website: https://www.questtavern.com/thelastsupper/.