 Nellie Farren starred as the "principal boy" at the Gaiety for over 20 years.She was joined in 1885 by Fred Leslie, who played comic characters and wrote many of its pieces 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.