I’ve done some googling to remind myself more of the play, since I didn’t take notes during the performance. This document (what a find!) provided me with a few additional notes:
Almanzo and Cap hunt the wheat onstage during the Long Winter. Refresh my memory — did they do that in the earlier version?
It’s during the Hard Winter that Mary gets sick and goes blind. This seemed new too.
Mrs. Brewster — the shadow of a woman that she is, and how Laura sees this — is a definite factor in Laura’s decision not to be a wife. Thus Almanzo is despondent and frustrated when she tells him she won’t go with him anymore. (Guess this is the Little House couple “on a break,” hee hee.)
There’s a note in the play that Mary gets a scholarship, with the broader result being that Laura no longer needs to teach to keep her in school. Laura feels lost — Nellie is now riding with Almanzo — and sings a song called “My Restless Heart” expressing this. All of this seems to serve as as a catalyst for her decision-making about Almanzo.