There are no happy endings in life — only endless confusion, regret and recrimination. This take-home message from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986 musical, “Into the Woods,” doesn’t exactly scream festive cheer.

But the method of delivery is too delightfully silly to resist, and a new revival of “Into the Woods,” at the Bridge Theater in London through May 30, makes the most of the musical’s whimsical premise, leaning into the visuals of fairy tale lore with a spirit of winking pastiche.

The show brings together characters from four tales — “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella” and “Rapunzel” — who gather in a forest and toil for our entertainment, like some bizarre version of “Celebrity Big Brother.” And in this production — directed by Jordan Fein, whose recent “Fiddler on the Roof” earned 13 Olivier nominations — it’s a visual treat.

Tom Scutt’s set and costumes take few risks, and with this material, that’s as it should be: The verdant backdrop is rendered with elegant, lifelike simplicity, and there is no edgily anachronistic streetwear in sight. The characters look as if they’ve stepped straight off the pages of a classic illustrated edition of “Grimms’ Fairy Tales.”

Kate Fleetwood is the standout performer as the witch who has hexed the baker and his wife (Jamie Parker and Katie Brayben), leaving them unable to have a child. To lift the curse, they must retrieve four items — one from each fairy tale. Fleetwood blends spiky menace with the brittle pride of a toxic, overprotective mother. When she sings “What out there that I cannot supply?” in a desperate attempt to stop Rapunzel from leaving the tower, we almost feel sorry for her.

Michael Gould, as the play’s onstage narrator, channels an endearingly hapless emcee; his vaguely lost-seeming demeanor when the curtain goes up sets the tone for the organized chaos to come. Jo Foster plays Jack with a comically exaggerated daftness that befits this tragically credulous character, and Cinderella’s prince, played by Oliver Savile, amuses with his blithe caddishness. After making out with the baker’s wife, he promptly bolts, reassuring her on the way out: “I shall not forget you, and how alive you’ve made me feel!”

But the true star of the show is the lighting designer Aideen Malone, whose artful deployment of light and shade imbues this eccentric mash-up with a vivid, enchanting texture. The characters are bathed in gorgeous angular shafts and shards that cut through the foliage, creating luminous tableaux vivants.

Red Riding Hood’s violent encounter with the wolf is terrifyingly depicted with backlit silhouettes behind the windows of her grandmother’s house. The birds Cinderella converses with are beautifully rendered as flitting, chirruping shadows, and when the giant’s wife stomps in to wreak vengeance in Act 2, a gargantuan human shadow darkens the entire set, accompanied by ear-splitting sound effects.

The earnest slickness of the staging makes the playful, irreverent touches all the more enjoyable. And there are plenty.

When Jack unconvincingly talks up his cow’s health while trying to sell it, the beast — represented by a hand-held puppet — turns its head to him in quizzical surprise. When the play’s other prince (Rapunzel’s, played by Rhys Whitfield) is blinded by thorns, Gould’s narrator unceremoniously ushers him offstage so we can get on with the show. And Jack, who emerges in gender-fluid get-up for Act 2, gets a big laugh when in a moment of bravery he wanly declares, “But mother, I’m a man now!”

The plot becomes unwieldy after the intermission as the characters, fearing the wrath of the giant’s wife, devolve into infighting and remorseful introspection. And the stakes wither away as theme takes over: Actions have consequences, and the bonds between parents and children must be rent asunder for the latter to thrive.

“Into the Woods” was inspired by Jungian theories of child development, and when you learn that Sondheim’s mother once told him in a letter that “the only regret I have in life is giving you birth,” it’s tempting to interpret the play in that light.

At the same time, maybe it’s not that deep. “Into the Woods” is a high-concept pantomime, and not vintage Sondheim. As Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times in 1987, the show is “at once his most accessible and least dramatic.”

Its pleasures are simple, and, in large part, nostalgic.

The illustrations that accompany childhood fairy tale books are so deeply imprinted onto our collective psyche that if we happen to set eyes on them in adult life, the effect is both melancholic and strangely comforting.

“Into the Woods” has a lesson to impart about the passage from childhood to adulthood — yet for two and a half hours, the audience is taking a journey in the opposite direction.

Into the Woods

At the Bridge Theater in London through May 30; bridgetheatre.co.uk.