Review of the comedian's new tour about family life

There’s no shortage of stand-up tours targeted at the ‘mum’ audience, but Esther Manito’s bluntly frank take on her situation comes with a bite and a passion that transcends the demographic.

A circuit-hardened veteran, she never lets the pace or intensity of her angry but weary diatribe flag. Nor does she soft-soap realities of life as a harried, working-class Essex mum.

It’s a world of Groupon deals, holidays in Skegness, and easyJet for rare ventures further afield. Her description of watching a fellow traveller go to extreme lengths to avoid paying an excess baggage fee is flecked with pride at someone bucking the system. 

On a personal level, she’s fighting a husband who never listens, 17 years into their marriage, a surly, self-centred pre-teen daughter and primary-aged son never letting her use the toilet without the constant whine of ‘mum, mum, mum’ like a zombie at the door. And don’t get her started on the terrifying demands of the endless dress-up days at his school… or rather do, as that unleashes another typically fiery diatribe as her limited tolerance is stretched once more.

As her outraged rants become increasingly heightened, she  calls to mind Mark Steel in his pomp. They may be a generation, a gender and a Thames Estuary apart, but they are two kindred spirits united in righteous disgruntlement and an eye for the absurd.

Manito says she gets grief online from portraying a warts-and-all version of motherhood (a version that’s almost entirely warts in her telling, admittedly), but anyone who winds up the militant wing of Mumsnet must be doing something right in exposing the messy truths of parenthood. 

Meanwhile as a  member of the ‘sandwich generation’, the fortysomething Manito  also has to look after in-laws, which, by various turns of events, leads to a particularly amusing encounter with the local drug dealer. And you might never say ‘mother-in-law’ normally again thanks to another witty anecdote.

Some of her routines verge on the stereotypical, on parenting, on being a middle-aged woman loving true-crime podcasts, or on older generation struggling with emojis – but it’s the way she tackles them with a battle-scarred ferocity that sets her apart.

Plus there’s some edge to the observations, whether on the toxicity of men and the constant fear of the physical threat they pose, or the stark realities her family back in Lebanon face.

Nor is Slagbomb – named after a particularly noxious WKD and Jagermeister combo –  an entirely bleak look at her family life.  She’s impressed how her daughter is taught the self-esteem that was never instilled during her own emotionally repressed schooling, as represented by the 1990s sex education classes she recalls with horror.

Yet she seems to have no problem expressing her feelings on stage. And for all the intensity of her more heartfelt gripes, Manito remains a likeable presence, largely through the identifiable candour of her material.

• Esther Manito is on tour with Slagbomb until February next year. Tour dates

Review date: 19 Sep 2025
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett