Brendhan Lovegrove and Mike King: Walking the Plank

A man peeps his head around the corner of the stage. A bald, shiny head, it reflects the audience’s pretensions: fun and light-hearted, they want to be able to see themselves in the show. And a few seconds later, they do: a man planks on a stool on the center of the stage.

Mike King and Brendhan Lovegrove’s show was not really quite what the advertisements promised. It’s not that it was less; it’s that it was different. Having been a long time fan of the Love in the Grove, I was interested to see what kind of collaboration he could come up with involving the King of Pork. The result, really, was two different shows.

The thing that attracted me to the show in itself was that it seemed inherently racist. By racist I do not mean a pig slaughtering of Mike King; I was enticed rather by the inherent race battles that have founded our society, those of European basing their identity in relation to Maori, and of Maori just opposing those Europeans full stop. This kind of rivalry exists little these days; we are
simply too politically correct. Yet I had hoped our Town Hall’s comedy chambers would yield such a long-awaited battle.


Lovegrove’s planking stunt turned into a little yarning, into the same old inappropriateness, and then a few new tactics washed into the mix. Of course there was a little audience flirting; there is always the odd hen’s night lady he proposes to take home. It is all a part of his charm: this lady-killing, foul-mouthing, oh-my-gosh-he-really-did-say-that swagger stance is an old-time favorite.
Our National Bacon-Preserver Mike King was also one for the entertainment. Spouting out mouthfuls of I-hope-my-wife’s-not-watching Kiwi favorites, the main thing that came across about our naughtiest comedian was actually that he was intensely relatable. Wandering around the stage with a smirking stroll, King appeared quite at ease with the crowd. The stage could have been his home sitting room, although one gets the feeling that in front of the wife he might have tried that bit harder.


Together, as an award-winning dynamic duo, I believe this show could have been unforgettable. As it stands, showcasing separate comics with essentially separate shows, it certainly emits a few laughs. It’s just that the concept itself is not one that delivers, or one that is new. Sure, the jokes are not the same. Sure, they didn’t perform together. But if they had, one King could’ve made two, just enough glory to decorate Lovegrove’s Billy T crown.