Sweeney Todd for 4 year olds

I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, I was thinking that I just got the Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street Deluxe - Complete Edition on iTunes and I really wanted to listen to it. I was thinking that sometimes Pablo doesn’t pay attention to lyrics. I was thinking... well, I guess I wasn’t thinking.

First I should probably give an adult summary for those who don’t know the story. Sorry to state the obvious, but SPOILER ALERT.

Sweeney Todd is a horror musical by Sondheim. It is dark. Really dark. And bloody. Very bloody. Sweeney Todd is a revenge crazed barber who slices and dices his way through the necks of London while his deranged girlfriend efficiently makes use of the bodies in her meat pie shop. In the end he does get revenge, but accidentally kills his (now insane) wife whom he had presumed dead, so he roasts the deranged girlfriend in a huge oven and then kills himself. As an aside, his daughter is saved from the villain who perpetrated all the evil and goes off with her true love. But only after she escapes from an insane asylum the villain put her in after she refused to marry him. But I digress. The main plot is the killing and the cooking.

I know. What was I thinking? I have to say, the score is much more innocuous than the actual musical. I knew that in advance. There is no screaming of people being killed. Ok, once. But I forgot about that one. No blood drips from the iPod as it plays (although I bet if they could pull that off, they totally would). But still. Yes, I know. What was I thinking?

I am now going to delude myself into believing that I am not the only one this has happened to. Don’t burst my bubble. So for those of you in the same predicament, here is the 4 year old version of Sweeney Todd. Just have your child read this synopsis rather than the one above.

Sweeney Todd is a sad man who lost someone he loved. He feels angry, just like when someone takes something you want. He wants to get back at the person who hurt him, just like how you sometimes want to hit people when they take your stuff. He feels sad and angry. He needs to let it all go and breathe, just like what we do when you are angry, right? Yes, it’s a really happy ending because Johanna (the daughter) is safe, just like Sweeney wanted her to be, and she is with her true love. Yes, it’s a very happy story. He only feels angry for a while, and then he feels better (Dead is better, right? What the hell was I supposed to say?).

Of course, with Pablo the geography nut, once I let it slip that Todd was shipped to Australia during the HOUR LONG litany of questions, we had to go into the history of England its use of Australia as a penal colony. I know, I know, what was I thinking?!