I have a friend who, when we had to go into lockdown during the COVID outbreak, objected most strongly to the term ‘The New Normal’ when we were trying to get our lives back together. Let’s face it: it is the new normal – nothing will ever be 100% what it was before March 2020. In fact, while we were all in lockdown, it could very well be said that we were living The New Abnormal. Jeff Stolzer’s new play is a look at a yuppie couple (do we still use that term, or has this reviewer just dated himself?) during the time of lock down and the general decline of emotions, attitudes and everyday life leading back up to elation as we can eat out again and eventually try to live our lives relatively normal. Stolzer includes such things as a Zoom wedding cancelled because the priest contracts COVID, our dependence on phones and television during that period, elation when the situation is getting better and anger when idiots rushed out onto beaches starting yet another phase. It’s all here, including uplifting moments such as when people went up on their roofs or leaned out of windows banging pots and pans in honour of the Emergency Services workers. I had a muso acquaintance living in New York at the time, who went up on his roof at 7pm every night and played the bongos. Stolzer does not name his characters thereby allowing each of the audience to identify with them individually. Direction by Holly Howard and the ever busy Tim Marriott is so natural in style that it seems almost negligible, allowing the performers, Irish actor Orion Powell and Adelaide actor Rachael Williams, to be so natural that the audience feels that they are in the apartment experiencing the isolation with them. The reason that I mention the actors’ nationalities is that their New York accents are excellent (Powell spoke afterwards to the audience with a beautiful Irish lilt). Powell and Williams work so well together and one can just see the trust for their fellow actor oozing out of both of them. Their gentler moments are a superb example of a couple that have supposedly been together for a while. This is not a bleak production by any means, despite its serious subject matter. The simple fact is: we all experienced it. Because of that, the audience relates to everything they see with a real sense of understanding.