Here is a quick tutorial to play with speech synthesis in MyRobotLab.

Step 1 - install Java
Make sure you have Java 8 on your machine, you can download it from here

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html 

Step 2 - get the latest MRL
Download the latest myrobotlab.jar from the "latest build" link above the shoutbox into a fresh new directory.

Step 3 - Start MRL for the first time and install all services
Start a cmd or shell and cd to the directory where the jar exists. Type the following.

java -jar myrobotlab.jar

The user interface should start - on it we need to install all the dependencies for all the services.  MyRobotLab will download many jars - it will take a while, but this is only needed to be done once.

Step 4 - starting a service

Restart after its done downloading everything - now all the grey services should be green.  Type Mary in the text box - this will search for MarySpeech. We are going to start this service, so right click and select "start"

Step 5 - Using Python to make MarySpeech speak !

MarySpeech does not have a user interface at the moment, so you must use "python" to make it work.
Press the python tab and type :

mary.speak("hello I can speak words")

Then press the arrow button to execute this very small script, if all goes well and you have speakers which are not on mute you should hear the words spoken.

More Stuff !

There are more speech synthesis services besides MarySpeech. Each one has its own characteristics - they could be local or require a connection to the internet to operate, they may be a service which requires a access key, or they may be open source.  You can see all current Speech Synthesis Services when you click on the speech category.