REVIEW: B48Y Crash Lands on Earth!, Lukas Meintjes, EdFringe 2026 ★★★

Crash, bang – B48Y’s spaceship arrives at an Edinburgh gay club. Their first interactions with a crowd of half-cut queers trying to teach them to be a human. A human. Specifically, RuPaul, as seen on a poster behind them. There’s a fascinating concept in Lukas Meintjes’ clowning romp, performed near non-verbal for much of the piece, and latterly seeing B48Y translate using some form of alien dildo. It’s frivolous clowning fun, that follows a repetitive structure which sometimes satisfies and sometimes feels faint, yet provides plenty of laughs throughout.

Audience members are coaxed to the stage to provide B48Y with their garments, then replicated through a cloning machine, and fashioned onto their body – in which the participant is then tasked with instructing our friend from another world as to how to use it, and above all, how to look like the drag performer they truly yearn to be. There’s a nascent queerness in the piece that seeks to imagine viewing queerness as normative rather than an othering, which is a sweet and resonant idea. Meintjes relies greatly on the audience members they pull onto the stage to provide the insight, while bumbling around as an alien who’d arrived right on Earth would.

A talented performer who manages to implement callbacks and physicality in deft doses, it feels that Meintjea falls into a rut at its midpoint, when it becomes apparent that all we will see is the same concept repeated. B48Y has to learn to wear underwear, then wear a dress, then jewellery, then heels. It holds your attention long enough and provides plenty of big laughs, but sometimes lacks that outlandish appeal that makes clowning of this order engrossing. B48Y Crash Lands on Earth! takes the form of an extended sketch over an hour that teases out interesting ideas about gender, sexuality, and plenty of uproarious moments, though lacks an arc or treatise of depth. If not an arc or a treatise, maybe it just needed to be completely absurd, in which case it lacks the variation to hold the room.

Beyond trying to put this piece to task, you’ll certainly have an enjoyable hour spent with B48Y. There’s an endearing persona that asks us to look at the fundamentals of living authentically, with a very light touch. Certain audience members delighted in parenting our new collective alien child, and found plenty of glee in the subtle in-betweens that make up what it is to live as a queer person. Or queer alien. Or queer anything/anyone. Maybe I’m deeping it and maybe the show doesn’t ask you to, but there’s probably another outing for B48Y that handles the opportunity with either more purpose or giddiness.

Recommended Drink: Pair this with an Alien Secretion (yes, that is a real drink).

You can catch B48Y Crash Lands on Earth! until August 30th at Studio Four at Assembly George Square Studios from 22:40 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.