The lack of quality in the writing of the review... and the total lack of insight, or even second-hand wisdom by Jeffrey Gantz... forces me to beg the Boston Globe to prevent Mr. Gantz from offering his in-print opinions of any dramatic performance, ever again.  His work is beneath the quality that the Boston Globe must maintain at a minimum.

I found this review beautifully written, evocative, and insightful. With all the times I've seen TGM over the years, I imagined I was done with it, but Mr. Gantz has inspired me to revisit that notion. 

I also find ReaderMan's comment perplexing, even bizarre. Mr. Gantz seems to me a graceful writer - he shows a deep appreciation of context and intent on the part of both the playwright and ART. In fact, I would say that this piece represents a lofty critical standard which the Globe  continues somehow  economically challenging times. I haven't seen too many daily newspapers do better.

Website gremlins on the loose! 

Should read: "In fact, I would say that this piece represents a lofty critical standard which the Globe continues somehow to maintain in these  economically challenging times. I haven't seen too many daily newspapers do better."

I've just seen the production. I thought three of the actors were excellent, but the interpretation of Amanda utterly misses the point of the play. Tennessee Williams loaded in plenty of clues that Amanda is supposed to be a portrait of a narcissist. For example, her obsession with collecting jonquils -- otherwise known as the narcissus -- and reminiscing about how she used to force everyone else to drop whatever they were doing to help her collect them until there was no more room in the house. That's Amanda in a nutshell -- absorbed in her own agenda, no room for anyone else. Williams contrasted the jonquils with the "blue roses," the symbol of genuine individuality which fragile Laura possesses. In this production, Ms Jones presented Amanda as more of a "survivor." In an interview, she notes that Tennessee Williams never talked about that dimension of the character because it didn't suit his purposes, as she put it, though it suited hers. Another way of putting it is that she's doing an interpretation of the character that isn't what the playwright intended. Obviously an artist has a right to do a new interpretation if she so desires, but I think it's worthy of comment that a great deal of the tragedy and pathos of the play gets lost if this central character is so greatly reinterpreted. As this reviewer mentions, when she sashays around the room, she almost seems charming. Not the creepy portrait of a narcissist so wrapped up in her fantasies that she threatens to take both her children down with her. It would be one thing if this production offered greater complexity to the portrait of Amanda as someone whose inability to deal with reality is destructive. But instead that dimension of the character seems to have mostly been jettisoned. I thought the rest of the actors were truly impressive, but in terms of what was done to the structure of the play, it was like seeing a 4-legged table with one leg missing.