Despite the fact that some associate musicals with cheesy joy, the genre is not limited to gleeful stories, as can be demonstrated by the macabre musical, Sweeney Todd. The original story of the murderous barber appears in a Victorian penny dreadful, The String of Pearls: A Romance. The penny dreadful material was adapted for the 19th century stage, and in the 20th century was adapted into two separate melodramas, before the story was taken up by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. The pair turned it into a new musical, which has since been performed across the globe and been adapted into a film starring Johnny Depp. Sondheim and Wheelers drama tells a disturbing narrative: the protagonist, falsely accused of a crime by a crooked judge, escapes from Australia to be told that his wife was raped by that same man of the court. In response, she has committed suicide, and her daughter - Todds daughter - has been made the ward of the judge. The eponymous figure ultimately goes on a killing spree, vowing vengeance for the people who have wronged him but also declaring we all deserve to die, and acting on this belief by killing many of his clients, men who come to his barbershop. His new partner in crime, Mrs Lovett, comes up with the idea of turning the bodies of his victims into the filling of pies, as a way of sourcing affordable meat - after all, she claims, times is hard. Cannibalism, vengeance, murder and corruption - these are all themes that demonstrate that this show does not conform to a happy-clappy preconception of its genre.
Question: There are four themes in Sweeney Todd.
Options:
A. true, B. false, C. uncertain
Answer: B