"Life's a bitch, and then you marry one." Actress Cynthia Silver watched in horror as this phrase was used on national TV to describe her wedding. Eleven million people witnessed snippets of her trip to the altar, mostly featuring moments where she cried over her reflection in a fitting-room mirror and burst into hysterical tears on a New York City street corner. Reality TV turned the happiest day of Cynthia Silver's life into a joke, but now it is her turn to tell the story. With her unique and witty one-woman show, Bridezilla Strikes Back, currently playing at the Flea Theatre as part of the New York International Fringe Festival, Silver delights audiences by giving her traumatic experience a humorous spin.
Silver first appears onstage in a puffy wedding dress appallingly decorated with a humongous white bow at the neckline. Her face is a scowl, and when she opens her mouth, the sound of a monstrous, mechanical roar fills the theater. This entrance assures the audience they are not about to hear yet another "woe is me" tale. Silver does not dig for sympathy, nor badmouth those who betrayed her. On the contrary, she is mostly complimentary toward the reality crew that shadowed her daily activities. Though they later stabbed her in the back, at the time they were filming she considered them her close friends.
Before reality TV turned Silver's life upside down, she was living in a studio with her fianc
