Along with its poignancy and heartfelt feeling for home, the adaptation captures Saroyan's joie de vivre. In its musical form, ''The Human Comedy'' adapts the loving vignettes of Saroyan's novel to the operatic needs of aria, recitative, and vocal ensemble. The strain of bearing such tidings creates the lad's inner conflict as he reaches for the maturity he will need to become ''man of the family'' when word of Marcus's loss comes clacking over the telegraph receiver. Death reaches Ithaca mainly via the official telegrams Homer delivers to the families of soldiers killed in action. Like ''Our Town,'' which it resembles in some ways, ''The Human Comedy'' concerns life and death and growing up in a small community. Grogan (Gordon Connell), the tippling but otherwise reliable old telegrapher. Homer quickly wins the approval of Spangler (Rex Smith), the good-natured Postal Telegraph manager, and Mr. Besides Homer, the Macauleys include little wandering Ulysses (Josh Blake), wisely maternal widow Macauley (Bonnie Koloc), pretty sister Bess (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and GI brother Marcus (Don Kehr), who is off to the war from which he will not return. Fourteen-year-old Homer Macauley (Stephen Geoffreys) has just gone to work as a messenger boy at the local Postal Telegraph office. ''The Human Comedy'' is set in mythical Ithaca, Calif., in the early days of World War II. The sense of embrace that begins by flanking the numerous cast with two sections of a small orchestra extends figuratively to the feeling of shared joy and wonder that enfolds the audience. Goodwill and good feeling, tenderness, and affection create the warmth that radiates from ''The Human Comedy,'' at the Public/Anspacher Theater.cq Galt MacDermot and William Dumaresqcq have distilled William Saroyan's bittersweet 1943 novel into a pop opera of exceptional charm and winning appeal.

The human comedy novel