Yosemite pageant celebrates 80 years

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — The winter that Ansel Adams shot one of his most renowned images of Half Dome, Yosemite's iconic granite crest, he nearly gave up photography to become a classical musician.

A play he wrote and set to music from that time, "The Bracebridge Dinner," celebrated its 80th anniversary this year in eight performances staged in the park's Ahwahnee Hotel.

Hundreds of families have made attending the play — an elaborate Christmas story about a fictional English squire — a tradition, flying in from around the world to eat the accompanying sumptuous eight-course meal.

For the electricians and park rangers who make up the pageant's Renaissance-era ensemble cast, it's a chance to play a role in Adams' imaginary world.

"He brought the way he viewed the world to all of our eyes," said Dave Giles, a payroll manager at the park who plays a tights-wearing extra. "He loved Yosemite and the Bracebridge was one of the many ways he was able to bring that out."

Conceived as a ploy to lure travelers to the park in wintertime in the mid-1920s, the play tells the story of a holiday evening at Bracebridge Hall, home to an unusual English nobleman based loosely on a character in a short story by Washington Irving, author of "Rip Van Winkle."

Until 2002, tickets to the performance were distributed by lottery, with as many as 60,000 people annually applying for 2,000 available spots. Now the event has expanded to allow open ticketing, and audiences have filled the 350 available seats each night, despite the $345 price tag. This season's performances ran through Dec. 26.

On a recent snowy evening, a dozen hotel chefs fanned out with pears poached in Riesling on trays, in preparation for the onslaught.

Guests decked out in evening wear sat in near darkness as singers wearing brocade, furs and sequined pantaloons pranced into the Ahwahnee's dining room.

"Let the feast begin!" boomed Lord Merrick, a k a Squire Bracebridge, played by San Francisco actor Michael McCarty.

Like any production, the dinner has had its share of glitches, cast and crew said. Once, a squirrel chewed through the electrical wires. Last week, a prop got lost in the hotel's vast expanses.