In 1907, Komisarjevsky directed his first production, for his half-sister's theatre in Moscow. (She died in 1910, aged 45.) In the same year, he founded a drama school in Moscow, adding a studio-theatre in her memory in 1914. During the rest of the Imperial era, and later under the Soviet régime, Komisarjevsky worked as a producer and director in Moscow until 1919, when, fearing arrest by the secret police, he escaped to Paris. On the advice of his fellow émigré
Serge Diaghilev he went from there to London. In June 1921, Rosing and Komisarkevsky presented a season of "Opera Intime" at the Aeolian Hall in London, with members of the
British Symphony Orchestra conducted by
Adrian Boult. The operas given were
The Queen of Spades,
The Barber of Seville,
Bastien und Bastienne and
Pagliacci.
The Times commented that the staging gave an "irritating sense of amateurishness," however
The Observer judged that Komisarjevsky had been "very ingenious" in adapting the operas for the small stage. In 1921, Komsarjevsky earned good notices for his production of
Chekhov's
Uncle Vanya for the Stage Society, in
Constance Garnett's translation. He was 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.
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 life and death ==