Acting Class by Nick Drnaso Review

A group of seemingly random people join a community acting class. But then the fictional scenarios they play out in the class start happening in real life. Some of the people begin losing time, disappearing into a fugue state with no memory of the last few days, and the lines between reality and fantasy blur for many of them. Who is the charismatic acting teacher and what’s really going on?

Nick Drnaso, one of the most talented cartoonists working today, is back with his latest book, Acting Class. As a fan of his previous two books, Sabrina and Beverly, I wanted to like Acting Class more than I did, and, though there’s a lot in this book I did enjoy, I found the things he set up to be underexplored, ending the book on an unsatisfactory note.

From the first scene, Drnaso sets up the central theme of the book - the question of what’s real and what isn’t - as Rosie and Dennis pretend to be strangers on a first date, though they’ve been married for years. From there, I really loved the slow burn of increasing weirdness in the story. It’s not immediately clear that John Smith, the instructor, is creepy, though you do get that impression more and more as the story progresses. Similarly, the way the acting classes start to take over some of the students’ lives is gradual and very disturbing and subtly insidious in how it does so.

Drnaso continues to pepper the story with lots of clever, intriguing details throughout, revealing details of certain characters’ lives. Like Neil, whose philanthropic work masks a dark past, and Gloria noticing how the janitor’s house looks like her childhood home. The way Drnaso ramps up the unease and tension is quite brilliant.

That said, I felt aspects of the story were also underwritten which made it hard to understand why things were happening or what the point of it all was. The final group storyline had a lot of intense and exciting strands but what was the meaning behind it all? How is it that simple acting exercises had such a profound effect on some of the participants like this?

Is it a coincidence that the participants all come from the less affluent end of society, working low income/status jobs, if they have jobs at all, or suffer from mental problems? What was that about Gloria’s home being like the janitor’s - did John do research on Gloria beforehand and target her and, if he did that, did he target the others too?

It’s really compelling to see how the acting lessons start to affect the students’ behaviour in their real lives, and for those scenarios to bleed over into reality, but it doesn’t really go anywhere beyond that. After a certain point, things stop developing until they do that elaborate final piece and then it’s over. I would’ve liked to have seen that go even further where even the reader can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t - as it is, you know exactly when they’re acting and when they’re not.

Maybe Drnaso was commenting on contemporary society, how fake news, Russian bots, etc. have made it so that reality is a tenuous thing to constantly be questioned, and the most susceptible seem to be lonely people with boring lives like many of the characters here. I don’t think he quite successfully made that connection or added anything more on the subject though.

The impression I got was that he was going somewhere with the whole questioning of reality angle and then it got away from him towards the end where he couldn’t quite wrap it up into anything particularly memorable - the way it ends is too sudden leaving the reader with too many questions. It’s unsatisfying because you’re not sure what you’re meant to take away from the story, if anything - the point is unclear and, considering how creative the storytelling had been up to then, to end it like that felt abrupt, unimaginative and underwhelmingly flat.

Still, Nick Drnaso’s books are always worth reading - if you’ve never read him before, I highly recommend any book you can find with this guy’s name on it. He manages to consistently produce original, thoughtful stories and, even if Acting Class isn’t as brilliant as his other books, fans will definitely find elements of the book to enjoy regardless. It had a lot of good parts but ultimately didn’t build to anything as interesting as it was setting up.