That Mr. Hoffman is one of the finest actors of his generation is beyond dispute. His screen portraits, whether in starring roles (like his Oscar-winning turn in “Capote”) or supporting ones (“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Boogie Nights”), are among the most memorable of recent decades. Though he was brilliant in the 2000 revival of Sam Shepard’s “True West,” his stage work has been more variable.

Certainly his performance here is more fully sustained than those in “The Seagull” (for Mr. Nichols) and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” But as a complete flesh-and-blood being, this Willy seems to emerge only fitfully. His voice pitched sonorous and low, his face a moonlike mask of unhappiness, he registers in the opening scenes as an abstract (as well as abstracted) Willy, a ghost who roams through his own life. (And yes, at 44, Mr. Hoffman never seems a credible 62.)

Mind you, there are instances of piercing emotional conviction throughout, moments you want to file and rerun in memory. Mr. Hoffman does terminal uncertainty better than practically anyone, and he’s terrific in showing the doubt that crumples Willy just when he’s trying to sell his own brand of all-American optimism. (His memory scenes with his self-made brother, played by John Glover, are superb.) What he doesn’t give us is the illusion of the younger Willy’s certainty, of the belief in false gods.

For “Salesman” to work as tragedy (for which it does qualify), there has to be a touch of the titan in Willy, of the hope-inflated man that his sons once worshiped, so we feel an ache of loss when all the air goes out of him. That was what Brian Dennehy offered (some felt to excess) in Robert Falls’s marvelous 1999 production. Mr. Hoffman’s Willy is preshrunk.

Ms. Emond’s Linda, on the other hand, comes across not as the usual devoted doormat but as a big, brimming life force. This is not a woman who has been worn down by cares; she’s a vigilant, fire-breathing watchdog of her husband’s ego. And when she erupts into anger with her grown sons, it’s as if that speech (the much-quoted one in which she says, “Attention must be paid”) had been soapbox-ready for ages.

Though Mr. Garfield (“The Social Network”) brings searing heat to Biff’s Oedipal confrontations with his father, he is hard to credit as a golden, fading American dream incarnate, a natural man of the earth who belongs in the great outdoors. (He’s more like the weedy, tormented James Dean of “Rebel Without a Cause.”) And when he, Ms. Emond and Mr. Hoffman assemble into family tableaus, it’s as if you are watching characters digitally woven together from different movies.

Two performances stand out, luminous and palpable, for their authenticity. As Happy, the younger son forever in pursuit of Dad’s affection, Finn Wittrock provides a funny, poignant and ripely detailed study in virile vanity as a defense system. Bill Camp, as Charley, Willy’s wisecracking next-door neighbor, wears on his face an entire lifetime of philosophical compromises, small victories and protective cynicism. And he speaks so deeply from character that he makes even a line like “Nobody dast blame this man” sound as natural as “hello.”

At the end of this “Salesman” I felt that I understood Willy and Linda and Biff, and was grateful for the insights that the actors playing them had offered. But I felt I knew Happy and Charley, that I might run into them on the street after the show. I also felt for them. The gap between those two sets of reactions explains why “Salesman,” now and forever a great play, never quite achieves greatness on the stage this time around.