Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses." In 1886, Hollingshead ceded the management of the theatre to George Edwardes, whom he had hired in 1885. Nellie Farren, as the theatre's "principal boy", and Fred Leslie starred at the Gaiety for over 20 years. In the early 1890s, as burlesque went out of fashion, Edwardes changed the focus of the theatre from musical burlesque to the new genre of Edwardian musical comedy. "Galatea or Pygmalion Re-Versed" is a parody of W.S. Gilbert's blank verse romantic play "Pygmalion and Galatea". "The Morning
Engaged (play) seen as drawing on "Engaged" are Noël Coward and Joe Orton. By 1877, Gilbert, now forty years old, was established as a dramatist. After his early burlesques of the 1860s he had turned to writing comic opera libretti and non-musical plays, both comic and serious. His musical successes included "Ages Ago" (music by Frederic Clay, 1869) and "Trial by Jury" (music by Arthur Sullivan (1875). His serious and comic non-musical plays included "Pygmalion and Galatea" (1871), "The Wicked World" (1873), "Sweethearts" (1874) and several others that played for well over 100 performances – good runs by the standards of the