Giles Woodforde meets the actor and playwright bringing together generations parted by a digital and analogue divide

Tyrone Huggins was born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, then moved to Birmingham when he was five. He first appeared on stage at the age of 11, playing a fieldmouse in a school production of Toad of Toad Hall. When he went on to see a professional production of the play, it hooked him into theatre for life.

But he has never forgotten his roots and the subject of the British slave trade in the Caribbean is woven into The Honey Man.

“I began by imagining how it would be for a youngster from that generation to encounter someone who was locked into another time and way of life,” he explains.

“I was also interested by how the moment-by-moment connectedness of the digital world was squeezing out time to reflect and was also bringing its own form of loneliness.”

Tyrone has continued as an actor, as well as becoming a playwright, and in the Birmingham Repertory Theatre production of The Honey Man, which is on stage at Pegasus tonight and tomorrow, he plays the role of Honey Man himself.

As the play begins, teenager Misty is conducting yet another group of visitors round a stately pile. The house appears to be nearly as large and grand as Highclere Castle, of Downton Abbey fame, and it has been home to Misty’s aristocratic family for generations. She is plainly bored out of her tree.

The tour completed, Misty is supposed to start revising for her exams, but instead steps out into the rolling acres surrounding the house.

She comes upon a tumbledown shack, which is buzzing with bees. Bursting through the door, she discovers a man living rough. He has only the bees for company.

When Misty asks his name, in an extremely rude and abrupt manner, he tells her that he is simply known as Honey Man.

“What has happened to these bees? They are dying,” Honey Man laments, adding: “Troubles come not singlefold, but in battalions.”

But Misty couldn’t care less. She lights a spliff and contemptuously blows clouds of evil-smelling smoke around Honey Man’s makeshift home.

As far as she is concerned, he is a boring old man and she will make sure that her father gets him evicted, as he’s a squatter.

At first, she appears to be every inch the stereotypical, spoilt, upper class brat and she has no time for Honey Man and his folklore-inspired “analogue” ways.

“I bet you don’t even know how to use a computer,” she sneers.

“To me, Honey Man is an analogue character, while Misty is a digital character,” Tyrone Huggins explains.

“The tensions that emerge between the two of them focus around generational differences. Over the last few years, I’ve become aware that a generation of ‘digital natives’ has grown up surrounded by digital technology as a fact of life.”

The Honey Man is part of his collection of eight plays, four of them grouped as The Inheritance Quartet, and all about Caribbean diaspora.

The other four plays are called The Digital Projects and deal with the ways in which the digital world is affecting the way we live today.

“The Honey Man emerged as a digital project,” Tyrone adds.

Back in the tumbledown shack, Misty’s sullen face suddenly breaks into a smile; she’s remembered that her grandmother also used to keep bees. Honey Man breaks into a dance enactment of bees hunting for pollen and Misty joins in. The generational ice dividing them is broken.

As Tyrone concludes: “The Honey Man allows me to bring two characters together who appear to have nothing in common. And, because neither has any real friends, they have to search for what they can share.”

That is something we can all relate to.

The Honey Man
Pegasus Theatre, Oxford
Tonight and tomorrow
Tickets: 01865 812150 or pegasustheatre.org.uk