This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub: https://www.thereviewshub.com/a-i-m-an-invisible-mission-camden-fringe-2025-etcetera-theatre/

Whisked through a plethora of top-secret missions and a fraught love life, A.I.M. offers an inventive and physical piece of theatre.

Constructed almost exclusively of mime, the production follows a rookie secret agent, performed exceptionally by Bai Zhijin, who is put to the test in a number of increasingly challenging professional and personal missions.

Zhijin’s physicality is the standout performance in this piece. This is a remarkable 50 minutes in which Zhijin effortlessly creates the secret agent character, using every muscle in the body to capture the agent’s every movement. Zhijin moves with poise and grace, going from sprinting to carefully creeping across the stage, with each movement precisely weighted, evoking a believable and entrancing performance.

Alongside Zhijin is Jessica Perry, who serves not just as the piece’s sound effect creator but also doubles as a form of narrator/agent’s subconscious. It is through Perry’s work that the piece feels at its most creative. Through a myriad of objects scattered across a prop table, Perry’s intricate scraping of a balloon, slamming of vodka bottles, and a fun use of a straw in some water, just to name a few, help to immerse us in a soundscape which brings the agent’s espionage world to life. While it is Zhijin’s physicality that inevitably takes the plaudits, it would not be nearly as impactful without Perry’s precise timing of each effect throughout.

The production also does not shy away from typical tropes of spy thrillers, which may feel tricky to do on stage. Attempts at jumping across moving train carriages and frantic car chases are executed deftly and creatively in this piece, and are only enhanced by Zhijin and Perry’s combined roles.

Despite the minimal dialogue, the production never really loses its momentum apart from a few slower moments towards its conclusion. For the plot, it does, however, get back a little too much into a corner, and its ending does feel a little too forced in an otherwise smooth production.

A.I.M. is an impressive and inventive physical theatre performance which utilises the talents of its performers to bring the world of secret agents to life. The mime and live soundscape combine well to create a fun and funny short insight into the agent’s chaotic and secretive world.