That's interesting about the reception to Laura Osnes' acting. I didn't, unfortunately, see her in South Pacific, but I remember having doubts that someone so upbeat and relentlessly cheerful could believably take on all the emotions that Nellie displays in the second act.
Since Laura filled in for the six or seven months of Kelli's maternity leave and then after Kelli left the show for good Laura again was picked as replacement for the last seven months of run, I assume that Bartlett Sher thought the she had played the part well.
When Laura was cast to play Julie Jordan with Steven Pasquale, I had even greater doubts concerning that role. Up on Youtube is I guess a fairly recent clip of the original stars of Carousel, John Raitt and Jan Clayton, reenacting the bench scene in costume and makeup for a 1954 TV tribute to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Clayton's Julie is just so shy and withdrawn. So unlike Osnes.
Well I didn't see that Chicago production either but the Chicago Tribune said of her performance:
Osnes, who mostly has been stuck with one-dimensional ingenues and princesses thus far in her career, affords Julie a pervasive sense of melancholy — if there is one show where an actress can get away with playing the end from the beginning, this is that show.
So, if you have an attraction to this very dramatic decade of the 40s and its music, through your parents or grandparents or however, then see Bandstand and don't wait too long. You'll enjoy it and you'll be glad that you grew up under the influence of the great swing and jazz bands of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington, and not under the influence of rap and hip hop and other bands whose members learned to play the guitar in someone's garage.
(That last sentence sounds very snooty, doesn't it. I admit that I've been a big Grateful Dead fan who first saw the band at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY in 1970. I don't think that any of them went to Juilliard.)