Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...If you are a sucker for local plays, or if you stare each morning at Tom Skilling's weather page, imagining the deeper stories therein, you'll find a lot to like in what, for the Chicago-based Steinhagen, is a significant step toward darker and more emotional themes for a writer long adept at quirky comedy. Aside from its close attention to West Loop topography — you can well imagine this little crew thinking Morgan Street was Randolph — the piece genuinely captures the depressive cycles that many of us hit during winter, when freezes kill our love for our city and thaws make us give it another chance, even as non-weather factors in our lives play out in front of this strangely influential backdrop."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Steinhagen's dialogue nails the enervating corporate world these guys occupy, and his plot shreds the usual we-all-pull-together American mythology. Russ Tutterow's staging brings out most of the textures in this engaging character study, with especially good work from John Gawlik as the secretly grieving, publicly raging Landfield and Andy Hager as Bell, a go-along-to-get-along paper pusher."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Told as straightforward crisis-drama, it would be easy for us to wallow in the emotional hysteria, but Steinhagen's purpose isn't facile hankie-chewing thrills. Our unlikely band of brothers announce at the outset that they are recounting an adventure long concluded, and the fates of the disparate participants settled, in hopes that their hindsight will bring us wisdom, comfort and perhaps courage in the face of other seemingly overwhelming adversaries. Their final exhortation to "wrap up, stay warm and drive safely" is also a benediction, extended by those who survived (or didn't) an unforeseen cataclysm changing the course of their lives forever."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...The four actors—John Gawlik as an increasingly problem drinker, Andy Hager as a morose family man, Stephen Spencer as a smug single and Andy Lutz as the youngster whose greatest ambition is an office with a window, or at least an office—are marvelous, sharing group narration that switches seamlessly between first- and third-person. Director Russ Tutterow and his cast quickly establish the group dynamic—so quickly, in fact, that they highlight the major flaw of Steinhagen’s script: its length. Particularly in the first act, leading up to the blizzard that strands the guys in their car and sets off the life-changing events, the play can feel sluggish and repetitive. If Steinhagen shovels away a few extra inches, he’ll have a cooler comedy."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"... Blizzard ’67 is much more that a snow storm comedy,more thata quirky satire of ’60′s corporate types. It is a honest look at how four men deal with unforeseen chaotic events. Their personalities, warts and all, dictatetheir actions. Besides being a engaging theatre piece, Blizzard ’67 is a poignantstudy into the nature of human reactions – guilt and self-preservation dominant.Thisis Steinhagen’s finest work to date. Don’t miss this quirky gem. It is worth battling a snow storm to see."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"... Bottom line speaking (as the guys do), this flaky tragicomedy asks us how we live with things we never thought we'd do. Its chill isn't bound by winter—it’s prolonged by the secrets we hide under formless mounds of memory, waiting for a thaw. The joke here isn’t on us—it is us."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...Before male bonding and bromances, a man’s world was a little more competitive and a whole lot more impersonal. Steinhagen does a masterful job of recreating the male isolation of the time period and then drops two feet of snow on top of it. Tutterow plows through the snowstorm with well-paced action and humor. The company of Gawlik, Hager, Lutz, and Spencer shovel out thought-provoking performances. Blizzard ‘67 isn’t about the pretty white snow. It’s about the dark sludge left behind in a disaster’s aftermath."