Two recent Arthur Miller revivals have turned its Jews into Gentiles.

In The American Clock, recently revived at The Old Vic, the Baum family, whose lives are turned upside down by the Wall Street Crash, were written as Jewish. But in an attempt to widen the scope of those represented by the play, this production created three versions of the Baums — Jewish, black and Asian. The result was confusing at times. And then there is the nagging question about why the Jewishness of a story’s protagonists need be diminished before it can be seen as universal. Still, let us not get all defensive about it. However successful it was in terms of drama, it was a bold and, you could argue, inclusive move.

And now , down the road at the Vic’s younger cousin, what for many is Miller’s greatest play has had something similar done to it. In this new production, co-directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell, the Loman family is African American with The Wire’s very own Wendell Pierce taking the monumental role of Willy Loman.

This is by no means the first time that the ethnicity of Loman, who is often seen as a Jewish character, has been changed to African American. But rather than casting the play throughout with black actors, as has been done before, this production of Miller’s 1949 work depicts the Lomans as an aspirational black family trying to make their way in post-war America. And the result is revelatory. The status anxiety of Loman is as it has always been. And Pierce terrifically embodies the pride and fear of this hasbeen — or never-was — as he realises that, after nearly 40 years selling on the road, all the delusions that he has built about himself are evaporating.

That the mortgage to his house is nearly paid off is no comfort as he attempts to maintain the myth that he is widely respected to his once-promising, now underachieving sons Happy and Biff. Both sons are played with a spot-on mixture of contempt and adoration by Martins Imhangbe and Arinzé Kene.

Anna Fleischle’s design of the family home is a marvel in the way it mirrors the dark recesses of Loman’s troubled mind. Furniture and fixings are suspended in mid-air and drop into place as another milestone in the Loman memory randomly sparks into life. And around this heartrending portrait of a disintegrating man, the excellent Sharon D Clarke — fresh from her award-winning, title-role performance in Tony Kushner’s Caroline, Or Change — is a rock, her Linda the only Loman with strength of character.

But the revelation here is in the way the play reflects the specificity of African American experience without barely changing a word. For instance, in the scene where Loman pleads with his boss to be allowed an office job, the humiliation is stoked even further by the fact that the pitiless boss is white and the employee, black.

The play, of course, remains one of the most eloquent tragedies of working-class existence. But the issue of race adds significantly to the sense of Loman’s outsider status, and the injustice that the world plays by rules that he never even knew existed.