“Charlotte’s Web,” E.B. White’s novel for children about friendship and the power of words, is being lovingly staged this weekend by Ann Arbor’s Wild Swan Theater. With a cast of nine, plus two musicians providing incidental music (this is not a musical), Wild Swan’s retelling of White’s classic story of Wilbur the pig, Charlotte the spider and their human and animal associates really brings home the bacon (sorry, Wilbur).

As tempting as it is to declare that you can never be too young for live theater, the fact is you can. They are recommending this show for folks in grades K through 5 (and the adults who bring ‘em), which seems about right. Charlotte’s talent for writing words on her web is crucial to the plot, so it helps if youngsters in the audience are old enough to read.

White was onto the circle of life thing long before “The Lion King”; “Charlotte’s Web” begins with Wilbur’s birth – enhanced here with a blaze of bright light and a flurry of percussion – and ends (spoiler alert!) with Charlotte’s death and the birth of her offspring.

In between, young Wilbur learns the truth about what happens to pigs raised on a farm, and Charlotte sets out to save him by writing “Some pig” on her web. The farm folk think it’s a miracle, and in what may have been White’s wry commentary on the concept of publish-or-perish Charlotte keeps on writing and Wilbur keeps on living.

This is a bright, colorful production broadly played, with a lively chase or two all around the auditorium, but never gratuitously silly for the sake of a cheap laugh. Director Michelle LeRoy has wisely considered the age everyone, human or animal, is supposed to be. Sandy Ryder plays Wilbur as a wide-eyed, energetic child, whereas Laura Croff Wheaton’s Charlotte is a contemplative grown-up spider. Wheaton makes sure Charlotte looks like a spider, stretching her legs out and keeping them bent at the knee.

Other actors play everything from a pair of comical geese (Jeremy Salvatori and Michelle Trame Lanzi) to the good-hearted child Fern (Meredith Deighton) to Templeton the rat (Lise Lacasse), who by bringing in pieces of paper with words printed on them becomes Charlotte’s Webster.

This isn’t a new play – the adaptation is by Joseph Robinette who collaborated on it with White himself – and Wild Swan first performed it in 1991. But it feels fresh and breezy and just right for a spring weekend.