Show review by Jay Richardson at the SSE Hydro, Glasgow

In the end, the Scots were unanimous and spoke with a single voice. Yes, everyone wanted to see the face of Meena, Navid's wife, previously unglimpsed through Still Game's 44 episodes on television.

Retaining the familiar feel of a solid sitcom episode, drawing multiple plot strands together in a cosily entertaining farce – yet playing up to the occasion of 21 nights with 12,000-strong audiences by constantly breaking the fourth wall to address the sheer ridiculousness of the spectacle – this live revival provides a blueprint for expanding a TV format into an arena-sized production.

Topical, with sniffy, separatist ruminations on the differing ways the Scottish and English take their porridge, it's knowing too, with Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill's rascally pensioners Jack and Victor blithely dismissing the cynicism of Monty Python in reforming.

Rewarding stalwart viewers with allusions to notorious episodes from the series, including a recreation of Jack and Victor's top five witty comebacks to Boaby the Barman, the show nevertheless remains inclusive to newcomers and pulls out all the all-singing, all dancing stops for a demented finale.

Lest it be forgotten, Still Game began as an Edinburgh Fringe play before the central characters transferred to Chewin' The Fat's sketch format and were later given their own sitcom.

The creators and director Michael Hines have embraced the theatrical opportunities that re-constituting such an established and beloved show brings, going further even than Hemphill's last stage adaptation, Appointment With The Whicker Man, in terms of meta-playfulness. They've stayed true to the world of Craiglang but also to the mischievous, mildly subversive streak of humour coursing through it, reiterating that the elderly can still be incorrigible delinquents given half the chance.

So the plot runs like clockwork and is, up to a point, predictable. Tam is still a conniving penny-pincher, Navid and Meena bicker constantly and everyone can be relied on to drink too heavily at the least opportune moment. The sets of the television series might have been lifted straight onto the stage, a few tweaks for sightlines aside, with the vast majority of the action taking place in Jack's flat, the Clansman's pub and Navid's shop.

However, minor characters attempt to inveigle their way into the show against the others' wishes. Or dubiously try to fill in when one of the main characters suffers a bladder weakness. Jack and Victor play to their huge gallery by indulging their 'patter', amateurishly working the room with their thoughts on the lovely houses in attractive Bearsden, mocking the muted enthusiasm for this revival from the cheap seats, even instigating a 'Craiglang Wave' around the arena, an obscene version of the football ground standard.

The real masterstroke though, is the way in which three giant screens projecting the action onstage are incorporated into the narrative, eliding the complaint that arena shows can feel like watching television, especially for those at the back. Notwithstanding Jack and Victor's struggles to comprehend digital technology, the plot relies on Boaby's purchase of an iPad and Jack's subsequent desire to give his daughter away remotely at the renewal of her wedding vows in Canada. Cutting between Fiona and the rest of the family at the ceremony, and the residents of the Clansman gawping back at them through the iPad's exaggeratedly distorted lens, the screens present a cartoonish and concurrent, close-up perspective of the performances on stage.

This conceit also allows Jack and Victor to buy Winston a state-of-the art prosthetic leg from the technically clued-up Shug after an altercation with a 'dug' by the canal. Throw in Tam's latest money-grubbing wheeze; Navid's purchase of Heidbutt, a dangerously potent energy drink; Isa's picking of mushrooms by the graveyard; simmering, unexplained tension between Jack and Boaby over Fiona, and the decision to keep the Clansman open till Jack can deliver his father of the bride speech, and the stage is set for a denouement that's predictable only in its disaster.

Not every gag lands squarely, with Jack and Victor's floundering attempts to engage Jack's grandsons with their knowledge of rappers clunkier than their out of touch efforts to be down-with-the-kids require. There's a slightly laboured sequence when Jack's microphone remains 'on' backstage, betraying his and Victor's thoughts, while Isa and Navid listen on in horror from the shop. And a series of 'Learn to speak Craiglang' interjections, memorable quotes from the show bridging the intervals between scenes, recalling Stanley Baxter's Paliamo Glasgow, are just a little too enamoured with their own mythology, ultimately relying on expletives to justify the diminishing impact of their repetition.

Also, in this week of all weeks, with unity and division at the forefront of everyone's mind in Scotland, Jack's remark on the iPad's Siri operating system being unable to recognise the Glaswegian patter, 'and that's why the English don't understand this show', was delivered with rather too much feeling to not sound bitter. Disingenuous too, as the sitcom was airing UK-wide before it ended on television and retains fans south of the border.

Regardless, the laughs arrive thick, fast and rambunctious. And certainly, with more television episodes seemingly assured for the future, it would be a brave snub from the powers that be in London not to broadcast a resurgent Still Game series outside Scotland after such a successful return. Get it round ye!

Review date: 21 Sep 2014
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Glasgow Ovo Hydro