Living on the edge: Bhasker Patel, as Muhammad, a man with a phone and a broken-down van, trying to keep his community safe, in CamdenWalla. Photos by Harry Elletson
The murder of a white boy in Camden in 1994 sparked fears of a race war. GABRIEL MacARTHUR ventured to north London to see CamdenWalla, a play about that fateful night
In 1984, Nasim Ali established the Camden Monitoring Project. Based in a dingy and dank office on Hampstead Road, Ali ran a helpline to protect Bengali and South Asian workers from racially motivated attacks in the area.
This month, in the very same building, two actors have recreated the former office, staging a 60-minute play recounting the events of a fraught evening of 1994, following the death of a 15-year-old white boy, stabbed to death by a Bengali gang.
It wasn’t the baggy clothes, slightly contrived pop-culture references or bulky landline phone that placed me in the 1990s, but the cumulative fear and paranoia displayed by Mohammad, played by former Emmerdale actor Bhasker Patel, and Alima (Nusrath Tapadar) over the course of the play, which is written and directed by Jonny Khan.
References to the murder of Richard Everett and the activities of OPR – One Posse Rules – forcefully placed the audience in the uncomfortable reality of the violent, racial dynamics which shaped Camden during the ’80s and ’90s.
In 1994, the turbulent aftermath of Everett’s murder has created a busier-than-usual night at Mohammad’s office. As calls flood in, with stretched resources at his underfunded project, the stakes rise steadily. Trading snappy exchanges with urgency and panic, Patel and Tapadar convincingly portray the dread of a community attempting to keep itself safe with little more than determination and an overloaded phone line.
Versatile: Nusrath Tapadar plays Alima in Jonny Khan’s CamdenWalla. Pic: Harry Elletson
Harnessing expressionistic stage lighting and directions, Nusrath quickly phases between various people behind the phone line: Alima, a van-driver, fearful Bengali workers and representatives of funding bodies. Perhaps it’s the fact that the characters were based on real calls Nasim received, or Nusrath’s excellent versatility, but this was one of the most immersive, creative focal points of the performance.
Initially, Mohammad appears in a role deeply ingrained in decades of British media. He bears shades of turmeric and tomato on his shirt, a strong accent and is the butt of jokes about his limited knowledge of western culture. CamdenWalla quickly subverts that expectation and uses the cultural and age differences between niece Alima and uncle Mohammed to display a broader negotiation.
The audience learns alongside Alima that the Camden Monitoring Project’s practical methods are limited to a lift home provided by a poorly maintained van that’s prone to breaking down. Often, there’s little or nothing that can be done to respond to a call for help.
Alima watches Muhammad manically run between his phone and filing cabinet, archiving every incident in the belief that the police will eventually cooperate with him and dispel accusations from funding boards that the project interferes with crime scenes. Alima is baffled and spends much of the play pleading with her uncle for direct action more akin to vigilantes OPR to ward off racial abusers. Muhammad shouts back: “Fighting! Fighting! Die!”
This is a man who’s witnessed the chaos of street violence and has fled to the supposed sanctuary of the institution.
The crescendo has Alima shrieking her friend’s name as they are caught in a clash between the OPR and the police. Meanwhile, Mohammad stares into the audience, his face gripped by terror. Institutions aren’t the answer, but neither are the OPR.
Two-hander: Bhasker Patel and Nusrath Tapadar in CamdenWalla. Pic: Harry Elletson
The sudden ending, or lack of one, feels entirely fitting. The play ends, but its subject does not. The Camden Monitoring Project may have disappeared, yet its function survives in countless new forms.
The horror on Mohammad’s face when he picks up the phone is shared by my Sri Lankan mother within her own monitoring project: tapping frantically on WhatsApp, forwarding along screenshots of young men being attacked in the area and most recently, the devastation wrought by the Belfast pogroms.
When Alima calls out to her friends, fearful for their lives, she mirrors the calls I, and many others, made in the summer of 2024 to friends who now live in Reform constituencies.
The play shows that these coping mechanisms, utilising technology and connectivity to keep each other safe, aren’t modern-day inventions but were pioneered by Nasim Ali and all those involved in The Camden Monitoring Project, and other similar schemes. Ali and those before him rarely get given the limelight but this play shows just how high we stand on their shoulders.
Speaking after the performance, Tapadar described the Camden Monitoring Project in almost absurdly modest terms: “This guy had a phone and a man with a van – sometimes you can do a lot with very little.”
- CamdenWalla is being performed at Camden People’s Theatre until July 4 (7.15pm performances, 3pm matinees on Saturday). For tickets and more information, click here.
- Camden People’s Theatre is at 58-60 Hampstead Road, NW1 2PY (Euston Square nearest Tube station)
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
