R.U.R.

A full cast delivers a 1920s story about robots taking over the earth that is as surprisingly prescient as it is enjoyable. Author Karel Capek displays a keen intellect while examining the ramifications of an enslaved class of intelligent beings, a notion that bears more than a casual relationship to subsequent history. The cast is huge; more than a dozen people with very distinct speech patterns set the stage. There are the scientists who create the robots and the robots themselves, who are beginning to understand, and crave, freedom. Tessa Peake-Jones plays the beautiful stranger who opens the men's eyes to reality. The actors playing the robots, including John Bull, Marcia King, and others, do not resort to stereotypical robot speech, but they don't sound quite human either. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine