Caught in the storms of life in ‘Blizzard ’67’

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Stephen Spencer (from left), Andy Lutz, Andy Hager and John Gawlik in Chicago Dramatists’ premiere of “Blizzard ’67.”

Updated: February 18, 2012 8:06AM

Those trapped in last winter’s lockdown on Lake Shore Drive, and in the many frigid chasms beyond that roadway, need no reminder of the sort of rapidfire knockout punch a Chicago blizzard can deliver. But earlier generations of Chicagoans still remember the Blizzard of 1967, which remains a record-holder.

That storm blew into town barely two days after the temperature here had hit a balmy 65 degrees. Snowfall began at about 5 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 26, and by the time it stopped around 10 a.m. the following day, two feet of the heavy stuff had been dumped on the city and suburbs. Many thousands of commuters were left stranded. Many thousands of cars were left buried beneath massive drifts. Looting and gunfire had broken out in certain places. And an estimated 50 people died of storm-related causes.

Be warned: Jon Steinhagen’s “Blizzard ‘67” is neither a documentary about the event nor a source of cozy nostalgia. Although it comes wrapped in the snow-saturated overcoat of the storm, this altogether surprising play, now in a searing world premiere by Chicago Dramatists, gives us a tragicomic and ultimately profound portrait of four supremely average suburban Midwestern men who, as members of a carpool, find themselves caught up in the frenzy of nature. Yet long before the snow has fallen, they have been trapped in their Darwinian existence — struggling to survive at the office, at home and in the wider world.

At once acerbic, hallucinatory and achingly true, Steinhagen’s play (which loosely riffs on a number of real incidents). imagines one possible scenario triggered by the storm. But more crucially, it captures the nature of the many other severe (if less visible) storms that have already begun to buffet the males of the species here (and “male” is the operative word).

The carpoolers, who don’t even know each other’s full names, all work at the same faceless office in the Loop. (And it is worth remembering that pay phones, rather than cellphones, were the mode of communication at the time.)

Landfield (John Gawlik), who is married to a woman whose devotion can make him seem like even more of a failure to himself, happens to be in the driver’s seat during the storm, with both the horn and radio of his Ford Falcon “on the fritz.” Bell (Andy Hager, dressed in a perfect, character-defining sweater vest), is the rather timid, make-no-waves guy who is married, and has no love for his in-laws (“Imagine getting a root canal with a relish fork, and no anesthetic,” he quips when asked about having dinner with them). Emery (Andy Lutz), also married, is the boyishly naive upstart among them. And finally there is Henkin (Stephen Spencer) —unmarried and arrogant, and clearly lonely — who lets it slip that he has just gotten a significant promotion. This, of course, generates a palpable tension in the car even before the real storm begins.

The men make it to work on the day of the storm, and later haggle over whether to leave early, share the hotel room they are offered by the company, or tough out the ride home and maybe have the next day off. They opt for going home, but soon get locked in the full fury of the blizzard in a dicey part of the city. What happens next will undo two of them and mark the others for the rest of their lives.

Director Russ Tutterow has assembled a superb quartet. Each actor fully inhabits his character, but it is the ensemble playing that is truly exceptional. Grant Sabin’s minimalist set — a suggestive cityscape, plus four chairs and a table — are all that is needed, with Anna Henson’s simple projections and Joseph Fosco’s sound design adding just enough “truthiness.”

Steinhagen, a fine observer of human behavior, is a writer of great zest who clearly understands that irony is a weapon for these men, and that its use only reveals their internal chaos, insecurity and grief. And his epilogue for “Blizzard ‘67” is sure to haunt you long after you’ve left the theater.