praised for capturing the authentic Russian atmosphere of the play as English directors had failed to do. For the next five years, he produced and sometimes designed productions in London with success, and he became more widely known in 1925 and 1926 when he collaborated with Philip Ridgeway, the proprietor of the small Barnes Theatre in a western suburb of London, in a succession of Russian plays. He assembled a company including John Gielgud, Charles Laughton, Jean Forbes-Robertson, Jeanne de Casalis and Martita Hunt. His productions of Chekhov in particular changed how British actors, audiences and critics understood the dramatist's works. The critic J T Grein wrote in 1926: In 1932, Komisarjevsky became a British national. In the same year, he worked for the first time at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Critics thought his production of The Merchant of Venice spectacular but distracting from Shakespeare's text. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) refers to his Shakespeare productions as "unorthodox and provocative, sometimes brilliant, sometimes merely wayward", and comments that he showed little respect for the texts or for Shakespeare's poetry. Nonetheless the ODNB judges them valuable for showing up conventional productions as routine and humdrum. Komisarjevsky, though bald, short and "no Adonis", as one of his many conquests described him, was a persistent and successful womaniser. Edith Evans, one who did not succumb to his charms, dubbed him "Come-and-seduce-me". His first marriage, to Elfriede de Jarosy, ended in divorce. His second wife was the actress Peggy Ashcroft. The marriage was short-lived (1934–1936) but they continued to work together afterwards, and she learned much from him about the craft of acting. In the view of The Manchester Guardian his 1936 production of The Seagull, with Ashcroft as Nina, Evans as Arkadina and Gielgud as Trigorin was the director's outstanding achievement. His last production in Britain was The Comedy of Errors at Stratford in 1939. Later years When World War II broke out, Komisarjevsky was in the United States, which remained his home for the rest of his life. He devoted his time more to lecturing and teaching than to production. One theatrical venture was in Canada, where he directed Cymbeline in 1950 for the Montreal Festival of Music and Drama. In the last year of his life, the Arts Theatre in London invited him to direct there, but his health did not permit it. In 1946, Komisarjevsky made