The Follies, February 1922

# Museum Catalog Note

"Sequins and Sin" by G.B. Stern begins at Achille's cabaret in Paris during Mardi Gras. Renée O'Neill, a seventeen-year-old cabaret girl living in squalid conditions with her destitute father Patrick, a former artist now addicted to absinthe, works for minimal wages. Despite her impoverished circumstances, Renée sustains herself through fantasies of English country estates, imagining herself marrying into nobility. When Joey Carter, a cheerful English circus ringmaster visiting from Folkestone, arrives at the cabaret, Renée becomes captivated by his tales of circus life and open-air existence. Learning he departs for England the following day, she impulsively decides to abandon her life in Paris and runs away with him to join Ma Gullick's Circus, leaving behind her father and the only world she has known.