Andrew Scott, who recently slipped in and out of personalities the way other people change gloves in the Netflix reboot of Ripley, is at it again. A Dublin native, he’s now on to Chekhov with a brogue in Simon Stephens’s one-man adaptation of Uncle Vanya, billed simply as Vanya, a Russian pet name Stephens never uses. Scott juggles eight parts. In Chekhov, the big cheese of the household is an out-to-pasture professor besotted by truth and beauty. Here, he’s a washed-up film director still playacting the creative genius, mocked behind his back as “Alexander the Great.” His captive audience includes his selfless Plain Jane daughter, his bored-to-tears trophy wife, and his first wife’s brother Ivan—Plain Jane’s uncle—who’s had it up to here. Stepmother and stepdaughter vie for the affection of a physician and charismatic lapsed idealist who self-medicates with drink. A grandmama, a granny housekeeper, and a bankrupted neighbor who quietly hangs around for handouts fill out the cast list. In London, the off-the-charts entertainment value of Scott’s histrionics rated an Olivier Award, though some critics complained that he was peddling Chekhov Lite, deficient in tragic nuance. A reminder may be in order that the playwright regarded Uncle Vanya and his other late masterpieces as comedies—what later generations would call comedies of the absurd. —Matthew Gurewitsch