During the 1940s Compton appeared at the Old Vic as Regan in "King Lear", played Ruth in Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit" for 15 months, Regina in "The Little Foxes", toured for the British Council, in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, in "Othello," "Candida" and "Hamlet", and made her first appearance in an Ibsen play as Gina Ekdal in "The Wild Duck".