I am moved to enter a brief defense of Osnes. It is easy to take her lightly given the strange way that she arrived in New York, via some reality show, her perpetually sunny personality and her unapologetic love of fairy tales. Yet she was picked by Sher to replace Kelli O'Hara twice, maternal leave and final leave, and South Pacific ran for an additional six months or so with her in the lead.
Many, including myself, assumed that she could simply not play a tragic figure such as Julie in Carousel. Yet she played the role in Chicago opposite Steven Pasquale and she and the show were well received. Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune:
Osnes, who mostly has been stuck with one-dimensional ingenues and princesses thus far in her career, affords Julie a pervasive sense of melancholy.... [She] also offers a very striking window into Julie's determination to separate from her peers, manifest vocally through the exiting crescendo she constructs for such famous lyrics as "Round in circles I'd go," where the resilience in the musical swell undermines the lyrical expression of doubt. Julie is a tricky role — notorious in some circles for lines and lyrics that suggest an embrace of spousal violence and victimhood. But Osnes, and indeed this whole production, counter that archaic sensibility with a rich and foregrounded reliance on sisterly community in the face of male ineptitude.
The HuffPost:
As Bigelow’s reluctant love interest, Tony nominee Laura Osnes infuses Julie Jordan with a sweet and deep melancholy and sings like a dream. Much like Pasquale, Osnes delivers a measured, nuanced performance, which grounds this production in gritty, human emotion.
Isherwood, unfortunately for Osnes not writing in the Times, in his review of Bandstand offers up his repentance:
Osnes, too, deserves some major love for revitalizing what might be a plain-Jane ingénue role. She has become a reliably excellent musical theater actor, her gifts sometimes underrated or taken for granted. (Guilty as charged.) With fresh faces bursting onto Broadway every year, it’s easy to forget how rare her combination of talents is. She sings with beautiful purity and tone, acts with a fine simplicity, and here gets a chance to prove that her dancing chops are in fine working order, too. Osnes never pushes her character’s feelings on the audience; she reveals them slowly, as people do in life, allowing us to discover them for ourselves.
And that incorrigible John Simon, one of the last I would have expected to embrace sentimental shows with patriotism an integral part of the plot, or to embrace sweet corn-fed Christian ingenues from west of the Passaic River.
My last complaint is about the short shrift accorded to the musical Bandstand, which may not be outstanding, but is still superior to the competition. It won in only one category, for Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography.... Everyone, including Julia's mother, is eventually winning, with the added pleasure of Julia being played by Laura Osnes, one of out prettiest and most gifted performers.
That's all. Not ready to name a theater after her, but she deserves respect.
Updated On: 11/3/19 at 09:53 AM
