His well-judged production has a place for everything and everything is in its place.Every early assertion about independence is later blown apart by personal revelations under pressure as Weller - a kind of foul-mouthed Ironside sans wheelchair - proves himself to be a tyrannically bad loser.Poor terrorised Fonsia struggles to retain her dignity but finally descends to Weller's level and cries "fuck". With veteran director Frith Banbury managing to pace everything to perfection, that's precisely what you get. It's touching, but a very long way from Dealer's Choice.The programme boasts dozens of starrily cast productions worldwide, but that says more about the dearth of decent roles for actors over 65 than the quality of the play which is little more than an excuse for good acting. Peep through the French windows at the back and you can see a sitting room in which two motionless grey heads jut out above the back of a sofa, a piece of set dressing that is certain to be among the nominations for this year's for "Most Creative Use of Wigs" award.Fortunately, there is more activity downstage as events turn into a battle of elderly wills over increasingly vitriolic card games. She has only been there three weeks so Weller conveniently explains everything to her and us.He has little time for the other inmates - "one half is shaking so godamm much they can't focus, the other half is asleep" - a fact picked up on by the design. Enter Dorothy Tutin as Fonsia - their names alone suggest the writing's strained, would-be quirky charm - who immediately embarks on exposition.

It may date from 1977 but it's so old-fashioned I had an ice-cream in the interval. On Robin Don's beautifully dishevelled front porch of an old people's home, Weller (Joss Ackland) shambles about in disgruntled fashion before settling down to cheating at a hand of patience. In an attempt to entice serious theatregoers, the publicity proudly announces that DL Coburn's play won the Pulitzer Prize. If that's the case, I'm massively relieved that I didn't have to sit through the other nominations. For readers under the age of 90 who may never have heard of such a thing, I should explain that this possibly extinct activity consisted of a session of competitive card playing not unlike gin rummy, the game which fuels the, er, action of The Gin Game.

This software is a tremendous advance, and that's what's gaining the recognition.". IN THE rather less than bustling village in which I grew up, the weekly blaze of feverish activity centred upon a whist drive. Ford, unsurprisingly, didn't like the connection with cars bursting into flame so in a moment of madness we settled for AutoSteve But it doesn't matter what the name is. "AutoSteve also allows circuit testing much earlier in the design cycle - in fact, very early on when the designers are working out the schematics for the new car models. They can tell in advance which gauge of wire uses which resistors, say, instead of waiting five months down the line when the basic design doesn't work."But then there's the name. AutoSteve doesn't exactly conjure up what may be a major leap forward in safety and reliability for our most worrying forms of transport, but it was christened in true techie humour early in the development process and now it's too late to change it.

Two of the engineers advising the project were called Steve - Leedham from Ford and Twitchett from Jaguar - and it would automate part of their job, so ..."It's a twee name," Shipman says, "but the initial research proposal called it Flame, which was a technical acronym. "We're selling to several auto-manufacturers and we're also in serious discussions with Boeing and Nasa The aerospace industry, I must say, is very interested now. The great strength here is that it will free up engineers' time to concentrate on what I'd call the more interesting failures - the ones that have more catastrophic effects and higher risks."One of the aspects of AutoSteve which is winning over buyers is that it not only highlights potential faults, but also provides enough back- up analysis for a redesign of any failing system thanks to a powerful simulation tool.Shipman is enthusiastic about the software's numerous strengths. Once it became apparent it could be adapted to any hi-tech system, it was decided to launch it commercially under a new company, First Earth.At the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium conference in Washington DC, a big gathering for the top companies' techno-whizzes, Dr Price's presentation got an enthusiastic response from a range of companies, including Siemens, Raytheon and GEC-Marconi."We're now so pleased with what we've got we're taking the project fully commercial," Shipman says.