Rick Foucheux, Tim Getman, Nancy Robinette, and Jeremy S. Holm are all smiles in Arena's Death of a Salesman. Photos by Scott Suchman/courtesy Arena Stage.

Willy Loman is a tired, pitiable, senile man, older than his 60 years. But in the canon of 20th century American drama, he’s the Alpha dog, the big man, the Steve McQueen. He’s become an iconic figure, like Icarus or Hamlet, and lots of people who have never seen Arthur Miller’s defining 1949 Pulitzer-and-Tony-Award-winning Death of a Salesman probably know that to say somebody is “Willy Lomanesque,” is to call him pathetic and defeated, the epitome of self-effacement-as-cowardice rather than generosity.

It’s all unfair to Willy, honestly. He fights like a dog through this thing. He’s got some flaws, sure — his can-do American optimism long ago decayed into self-delusion, and he’s kind of a jerk to his loyal wife, who is even stronger than he knows — but his big problem, famously, is that he’s “liked, but not well-liked.” And, of course, that he’s outlived his usefulness to his employer. [Did Miller mean this as a broader indictment of capitalism itself? Discuss.]

The big selling point of Arena Stage’s handsome, satisfying new Salesman (in rep with Miller’s 1955 A View from the Bridge, the dual anchor for their Arthur Miller Festival) is the casting: As Willy, we have Rick Foucheux, in — oh, how I have waited to be able to type this phrase! — the role he was born to play. That alone would be reason enough to see it. Foucheux, who won a Helen Hayes Award a few years ago for a similar-but-not-the-same part in Studio’s Take Me Out, gets Willy’s misfiring sense of masculinity exactly, heart-wrenchingly right. That aside, in her quiet, controlled performance as Linda, Mrs. Loman, Nancy Robinette comes dangerously close to stealing the play away from him.

The casting of Foucheux has an interesting resonance: A year ago, he played Elia Kazan, who directed the premiere production of Salesman. His portrayal of a Kazan writhing in purgatory, wracked with guilt over his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee, seemed inspired not by the swaggering, successful Kazan, but rather the doddering, sad Willy Loman.

Timothy Bond’s direction is clean and assured, effortlessly managing the scenes set in the present with the flashbacks set inside Willy’s unraveling mind.

Helping keep things straight is Lauie Churba Kohn’s costumes. I have no idea if the goofy highwater pants that Willy’s grown sons, Biff and Hap (Jeremy S. Holm and Tim Getman, respectively), or his neighbor Charley (Noble Shropshire; now there’s a moniker) wear are period appropriate for 1930, but they certainly convey the glow of nostalgia that distorts Willy’s recollection of times that were doubtless better, even if they probably weren’t as better as Willy chooses to recall. More puzzling is her (or Bond's) choice to put Willy’s brother, Ben, in a Col. Sanders-style white suit. Taken with actor J. Fred Shiffman’s clipped, over-annunciated line readings and military-precise movements, the costume adds to the sense that Ben has just walked in from another play.

The heart of the show is the way Foucheux’s Willy and Holm’s Biff are each trapped in the other's doomed orbit, neither father nor son able to articulate how desperately each one yearns for the other’s approval. When Biff ultimately rejects the phony optimism to which his family has clung for so long, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s evolving or or simply descending into a nihilism that’s as destructive as Willy’s ridiculous false hope.

All of this is on Miller’s page, of course, but Bond and his cast bring it all to vibrant, aching life, no matter how many Salesmen have gone before. “What if you can’t walk away?” Willy asks Bernard (Lous Cancelmi), his neighbor’s well-to-do grown son, late in the play, after the latter has advised Willie to cut his losses. “I guess that’s when it’s tough,” Bernard says. A full-blooded production like this one is tough indeed, but we can’t avert our eyes.

Death of a Salesman (about two hours, 45 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission) is being performed in repertory with A View from the Bridge at Arena Stage through May 18. Arena's Arthur Miller Festival also includes a number of free readings and other events; see their web site for a full schedule and ticket information.