John Hollingshead had managed the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886 as a venue for variety, continental operetta, light comedy, and numerous musical burlesques composed or arranged by the theatre's music director, Wilhelm Meyer Lutz. 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. Edwardes expanded the burlesque format from one act to full-length pieces with original music by Lutz, instead of scores compiled from popular tunes, as was the usual course before that. The theatre's choreographer and dance-master, under both Hollingshead and Edwardes, was John D'Auban. Nellie Farren, as the theatre's "principal boy", starred at the Gaiety for over 20 years, from 1868. Between 1885 and 1891, she co-starred with Fred Leslie, who wrote many of the Gaiety's most popular burlesques under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr". 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.