Chris Robbins
1/1/07
The Bracebridge Dinner
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Chris Robbins
1/1/07
A grand hallway seating 300 people, a jester playing tricks throughout the dinner, a squire, a house keeper, and a parade of huge dishes presented in a royal manner, is it some sort of fair, or a movie perhaps? No, it’s the Bracebridge Dinner, an enormous event being held at the Ahwahnee Hotel up in YosemiteNational Park. I was one of the lucky 300 guests who had the opportunity to partake in this grand dinner and a show. Although it is a formal black and white dress dinner, tuxedos for men and boys and a formal dress, long and flowing, for the women and girls, everything else in the Great Hall, as it is called during the Dinner and any time else for that matter, is vibrant with color and full of life and entertainment. The Dinner itself is almost like a play or an opera that goes on for 3 hours, but not to fear, during this time the guests are served a seven course meal that goes right along with what those characters of the Dinner who are being served in the royal show they are having.
Now for a little history of the Bracebridge Dinner. The performance is actually based off of a short story called ‘Dinner at Bracebridge Halls’ by Washington Irving. I interviewed Martha Miller the Producing Manager of the Bracebridge Dinner to understand more of how the Festival had grown over the years. “The first Bracebridge Dinner took place in 1927 as a way to gain publicity to the newly completed Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Valley. The idea came from Donald Tressidor the original owner of the Ahwahnee, who needed a special event to attract people to undertake the difficult trip to Yosemite during the winter. Don Tressidor commissioned Garnet Holmes, a producer of pageantries in San Francisco, to come and help create this spectacle. Although achieving its initial goal it wasn’t until 1932, when a man named Ansel Adams, took over that Bracebridge Dinner subsequently turned a pageant into a tradition. “A Christmas Tradition that never really happened but that lives in everyone’s heart.” Some of his original dialog and ideas are still incorporated in the pageant today. Everything in the Bracebridge Dinner is planned, rehearsed, and timed; even the food is a theatrical presentation. Everything is so strict the pageantries are pretty much like an opera,” Said Martha. Taking in this information gave me a tiny idea as to how much time and effort is put into assuring this is a world class pageant. “The first pageant cost $22 per couple and was merely another way to try and fill the hotel during the winter, along with the invention of winter sports in the west. The Dinner was and still is composed of a 7 course meal that is theatrically timed to serve 375 quests simultaneously at the right time throughout the pageant. Even the chefs in the kitchen have a card so they can understand the timing.” commented Emily Jordans, the woman giving the lecture to those, including me, interested in learning more of the history of Bracebridge. “Donald Tressidor himself was the first squire of the Dinner, while Ansel Adams was the 1st Master of Misrule, jester, and was the director of the Dinner until 1946.” Mr. Adams is better known internationally as the unparalleled photographer who captured the beauty of America’s Parks on film.
Next is a brief overview of the short story, The Bracebridge Dinner: Squire Bracebridge and his wife hold a great feast in their manor and Squire Bracebridge mourns the lack of tradition during the holidays. Filled with merriment, the invited quests go upstairs into the attic and discover medieval garb and dress up and parade around Squire Bracebridge’s halls. The guests of the Ahwahnee are the guests “invited” to partake in the celebration of Bracebridge. The most prominent figures noticed are the squire, the parson, the house keeper, the magistrate, the chorus, and the jester. During the meal there is always a fish meal, a Peacock (or in this case duck) pie, beef, and pudding. In 2005 alone they had planned for 2,218 but went up to serving approximately 2,800. These performances required 1,500lbs of tenderloin, 3,000 plum puddings, 800lbs of duck legs, 240lbs of marinated mushrooms, 120 gallons of wassail was served. 36,500 pieces of china ware were used. It took 60 individuals to serve the meals at the same time, and 3840 hours to prep and serve the entire Dinner.
In past pageants the Squire and his wife were hired from the StanfordUniversity’s Acting Departments. In 1977 the squire and wife were chosen from among the visitors, and now it is possible at times to buy the role in a charitable auction and on one occasion the bid that won the parts raised $3,000 for the Ahwahnee. Bracebridge hall is now how the employees of the Ahwahnee spend their Christmas, and therefore has become their “family” tradition at Yosemite. The show was originally held on Christmas day until fairly recently, when additional days were added to the performance.
In 1973, Ansel Adams stepped down from his position of directing the Bracebridge Dinner. Then the Fulton family took over the production beginning with Eugene and his wife, and today through their daughter Andrea. The family has had the primary responsibility for directing the pageant since that day. In 1978 after completing the dress rehearsal Eugene died from an unexpected heart failure and his wife Anna-Marie took the reins of directing the pageant. Their daughter Andrea has been directing and performing for over 56 years, and in that time Andrea has continued to add and enrich the original version of the Dinner. Her contributions include adding the female choir as well as the candle light procession that opened the performance. She also wrote original songs to fine-tune the production. George Baker joined the group in 2000 and he changes the material yearly to keep the Festival new and fresh for the performers and the guests. I also received information about how the first Dinner cost $22 per couple, and the original cast of the dinner was composed of ten people, but the last performance so far has a cast of about 200 and the cost to partake in seeing this event is about $325 per each.
But don’t let the cost of this even scare you because it is one of the best things to see in your life time. It is worth the trip to get there.
The Dinner is also a full gourmet meal so there are multiple choices throughout the performance to try out something new and acquire new tastes. The meal starts off with a relish, composed of marinated mushrooms in a light golden brown crust with two small sections of dip, or sauce, what ever you want to call it, on the sides of the plate, next is a dish for those who like seafood. A shell fish puréed and chilled with peaces of lobster inside with a carrot thinly cut and wrapped around the outside of the piece, and served with a piece of flat bread shaped like a lobster claw. Once the places are cleared the pageant continues on and the next meal comes in, a bowl of soup with what appears to be strained celery, with a round flat piece bread that comes with it. After the soup was the duck, it was supposed to be a peacock but duck was the best choice instead. The duck was marinated, cooked, and served with a relish made from cumquats and a triangular wedge of flat bread as well. Some of you at this point may be wondering why the meals all seem to come with flat bread. To put it simply, bread is a wheat product, but without yeast it doesn’t rise, however, when the yeast is removed so is some of that flavor, making the bread into the perfect addition to the meal because after your dish is finished, when you eat the flat bread it removes the remaining flavor from the last meal so it does not interfere with the next meal that you’re having. It is sort of a compliment so you can enjoy the next meal that the chefs have prepared for you that evening while you enjoy the Bracebridge Dinner presentation. Once the duck is finished, like the rest of the courses there is a short pause in the story and the dinner so you can prepare by doing what you need before the next part of the presentation and meal. After the duck comes, what I think is the best part of the meal, roast beef over mashed, its not potatoes, cauliflower. Yes, cauliflower. The chefs have added a special marinade to them that it is in fact had to distinguish the fact, unless you have someone else who has actually had them like that before. The roast beef comes with some ahi over the top with a stick of asparagus. But the surprise of many this meal does not come with a piece of flat bread if that is what you were guessing. It is actually followed by a pear and cheese salad. The salad is no more then a few pieces of lettuce and a one half of a small tomato but comes with goat cheese with a bread and nut cover and pear. The taste of the goat cheese with the sweet flavor of the pear compliment each other and work to both refresh and remove the flavor of the last meal. Once that is over, rather than going strait to the desert, every guest is served a small cup of wassail, a drink that is supposed to be of all the wines and alcoholic beverages mixed together, which in this case is made from wine cinnamon and possibly rum but it was way to strong for me to be able to identify it. Finally after the toast with the wassail is done it is on to the desert which is plumb pudding with a whipped topping and a large leaf shaped wafer to go along with it. And after the dessert is finished everyone can relax and recount upon what they ate as the pageant finished its last 25 minutes of the show.
The entertainment itself is another matter entirely. It starts when everyone is waiting to be allowed into the Great Hall when three trumpetersappear and announce the Dinner has started. Once everyone has taken their seat at their designated table and begun to try out the relish on their table the Pageant begins. Slowly a procession of singers approach from the entrance to the hall and line up on the top of the stairs on the “stage” of the performance. Next the servents walk out and kneel down as if waiting, meanwhile the singers are still singing their hymns when Squire Bracebridge, his wife and their daughter walked out, followed by a procession of nobles, the jester, and the housekeeper. Each is holding a candle except the jester, the housekeeper and the Bracebridge family. The Bracebridge family lines behind the grand table lay out and the nobles line up with everyone else and keep singing. The Housekeeper is directing the choir as it sing and the jester sits of merrily to the side just listening. One the song is over the Squire gives a short speech and announces that the Bracebridge Dinner has begun, then all the nobles, with the exception of 2, leave with the choir. The Squire then calls up the jester and tells him to kneel. As the jester does so Squire Bracebridge tells the jester that for the night till the bell tolls 12 times to the next day, he is to become the Lord of Misrule and places a crown on the jester’s head. Once this is done the jester stands up and promises that he will be the best Lord of Misrule and all his pranks will be for humor and mirth. Throughout the whole performance the Lord of Misrule kept performing various pranks which kept the humor in the performance various tricks such as making people get of their chairs so he could walk on them while playing a Sousaphone, by which case he kept torturing one man who was confused about what he was supposed to be doing. Further on in this act the jester promptly takes one chair and puts in the middle of the isle and locks his feet into the lower section of the chair, all this may I remind you, while still playing the Sousaphone. He then scoots down the isle from atop the chair a keeps playing the same melody over and over. Once he is done he steps off and takes the same man and makes him push the fingers on the tabs as the jester played. Then to make matters worse for the man the jester walked in every which way making it hard for the man to keep his fingers on the tabs. Once this was all over then man was allowed to take his seat and the rest of the performance began. Even later on the jester tricked everyone by being dressed as a pope and came to “repent someone’s sins” at which case a girl admitted she snores, the “bishop” then decided that he had to “cleanse her of her sin” by pieing her in the face. Right before he did so, he handed her the pie for a moment at which case she threw the pie into his face. The suddenly knocked off the “pope’s” hat and the parson, this is a person sort of like a friar, recognized the jester and castigated him all the way off the stage and out the exit, at which point the girl returned to her seat and the Dinner continued on.
Setting aside the Lord of Misrule, the jester, and his hilarious antics, the performance was still entertaining and well done. It included much singing and at one point a four man group performed opera like song during one of the “breaks” while everyone was enjoying their duck. We even got the pleasure of meeting one of the trumpeters, one of the women sitting at the head table upon the stage and one of the other singers to come over and sing a song for everyone at our table because they knew a couple who was dinning with us and had been good friends for a long time. On another note when the meals were about to begin, the “head chef” came out and would announce the next meal, at which point the servants would march out with a large platform carrying the next dish, this was of course made out of paper Mache and not edible. The presentation was marvelous nonetheless and Squire Bracebridge would comment on the meal before the platform was carried back out and the servers rushed out with the actual meal and served everyone the dish. At one point the Head Chef and the House keeper argued over whether to have the roast beef or to have pork chops. They even asked one of the men in the front row what his choice would be and he promptly answered that he was a vegetarian, which gained a big laugh from everyone. The argument eventually forced them to ask the guests what they thought. When the chef asked for pork several people clapped at the choice, but when the Housekeeper asked for beef many more people began to clap and cheer. Then the House keeper said, “I guess that settles it…. and the choice for the dinner will be, Beef” At the same instant the Housekeeper had said beef the Head Chef uttered, “Pork.” causing the two to turn and stare at each other and the argument continued. They both then decided that the Squire would decide which of the two dishes the guests would be having. At which point a group of servants marched out with a large Boar’s head, they’re still fake remember, which look marvelous. Then the Squire requested to see the beef and as the other platform approached it appeared that the beef was from the rump giving it a not to grand look. At which point Squire Bracebridge decided to go with beef, much to the Chef’s disappointment. The parson, as to imitate the boring side of the church, set up seven tales from the bible for each meal. When it came to the Fish course he started to recite the story of the single loaf of bread and the one piece of fish that fed everyone who was with Jesus. Thankfully for the audience, and everyone else, except the parson, he was interrupted enough times that he didn’t tell the tale and never tried to tell one for the remainder of the Dinner.
The Bracebridge Dinner is in fact a once in a life time experience and I encourage everyone to go up there a see it for themselves. With the food, the music, and the performance there is a three-in-one opportunity for a life time of memories right there. But you have to plan the experience, because reservations must be made a year and a day in advance, and all the performances sell out within a few hours.
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