peter young’s listopia

69) Lee Hall, Spoonface Steinberg, 1997
I first encountered this in 1997 as a short BBC radio play and later snapped it up on video. (Lee Hall later went on to write Billy Elliott). Spoonface Steinberg is a quite extraordinary first person narrative from a young autistic girl who's also dying of cancer; her observations about her problematic parents, opera, the 'sparks' of life and the non-existence that is death are acute and memorably unsentimental. It was also voted one of the ten best radio dramas of all time by readers of Radio Times and, particularly if you have seen the TV version, this is one that can't fail to stay with you.

17) Karel Capek, R.U.R., 1920
The Czech play that gave us the word 'robot' and one that I suspect would still make for a good performance, especially the lively prologue. It goes where you mostly expect, taking a docile humanoid robotic workforce, winding them up and setting them on the rampage to world domination. Good fun too, and the mighty Capek wrote with a modicum of originality, saying things that have often been rehashed by lesser skiffy down the years.