The comedy duo Planet Washington opens Cambridge Forum's 2009 fall season with a benefit performance. Ken Rynne, an alum of the renowned Capitol Steps troupe, and his faithful piano accompanist, Frank Plumer, are Planet Washington. Together they provide an evening of music, song, and comedy improv that cuts through the rhetoric and gets to the laughter. If you sometimes think that "Inside the Beltway" seems like another planet, this show is for you!
Ken Rynne has homeland security and theater in his blood. The son of a Boston Police Sergeant, Ken's father and uncle founded the Lowell (Mass.) Repertory Company before WWII working with local radio celebrity Ed McMahon, Ken's aunt Phyllis was a fan dancer at Boston's Old Howard Athenaeum in Scollay Square, where she baby sat for young Alan Alda as his father Robert sang for the strip tease artistes. Ken's other relatives just had real jobs. As he did once as an energy lawyer at DC's Wickwire Gavin, at the US Senate Democratic Policy Committee (under Sens. George Mitchell (D-ME) and Tom Daschle (D-SD), the US House Banking Committee, Subcommittee on Consumer Credit and Insurance, and on the personal staffs of Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA), as a lobbyist for the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and as a Senior Vice President and lobbyist for credit card giant MBNA America Bank until it was acquired by Bank of America. Ken is a former member of The Capitol Steps and has written for and appeared in a score of annual Hexagon Reviews. Ken is now a comedy writer and performer in a one-man show *Planet Washington*, DC's freshest and funniest musical political comedy act, apart from POI. He has recently won praise at the 12th Annual California Comedy Conference and his recent CD release, *Holiday Sing Along With Planet Washington*, is considered by many the funniest holiday sing along ever.
