THEATER / JAN HERMAN : Actress Stretches to Give Voice Muscle : Joan Van Ark Leaves Lust, Greed and Sex of TV Soap for Lust, Greed and Sex of 'Macbeth'

By JAN HERMAN

July 28, 1992 12 AM PT

The idea of playing a pregnant Lady Macbeth--a concept suggested by her director and her co-star--seemed, um, basically wrong to her.

“Lady M. can be anything--but pregnant?” asked Joan Van Ark, registering her incredulity with a quiver of her blond bangs. “That would take Lady M.’s appetite away. A woman pregnant is like a pig in you-know-what. She’s pacified.”

Just what Van Ark is doing playing Lady Macbeth at all in Garden Grove seems the more obvious question. If you mention her Shakespearean role to anyone who has watched her for the last 13 years on “Knots Landing,” the invariable reaction is: “Really?”

The same may be said of David Birney, also a busy television actor, who is playing the title role in “Macbeth” starting Friday at the Festival Amphitheatre. But we’ll save our interview with him for another time.

Van Ark realizes that by doing the Grove Shakespeare production, she’s asking audiences to accept a sea change in her identity as an actress. Though she has made many TV movies and has chosen not to return to “Knots Landing” next year, viewers know her chiefly as “poor Val,” Gary Ewing’s ex-wife, who is virtually an entire soap opera by herself.

The last time the 49-year-old New York native had a major stage role was in 1987 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, where she played the lusty hotel proprietress, Maxine, in Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” (the same role played by Ava Gardner in the 1964 movie).

Not counting brief excerpts from “Julius Caesar” and “Twelfth Night” which she did last summer at a celebrity benefit for the Grove, the last time Van Ark played in a Shakespearean production was more than 15 years ago, at a free drama festival in Los Angeles.

It was after watching her do Portia to Wayne Alexander’s Brutus and Olivia to Sally Kirkland’s Viola at the benefit that director Jules Aaron invited her to play Lady Macbeth. Van Ark’s agent and her manager tried to discourage her from taking the role.

“They both kept saying, ‘No, no, no,’ ” she said during a break in rehearsals last week. “They’re not happy about this.”

That isn’t surprising in view of her Grove salary. The sporty $120,000 Mercedes convertible she drives to work tells you her services tend to bring more than the $350 a week she is getting here.

Merely from a publicity perspective, it makes no sense for her to play second banana at a theater far from the national limelight. Certainly, she can find a better way to capitalize on being named “Stylemaker of the Year” (with Kevin Costner) by the National Cosmetology Assn. at its recent convention in Nashville.

But Van Ark dismissed the concerns of her professional advisers.

“I told my manager this kind of thing tests me in the best way possible,” she said. “It’s not life and death here. So if I fly back to New York, where I have a strong possibility of playing something (in the fall), I’ll have some muscle in my voice.

“By leaving ‘Knots Landing,’ I made a life choice. It was partly to be able to do things I haven’t done for a while, and theater was certainly one of them. This is my chance to stretch. It means that when I do return to the arena, I’ll be better for it. My next director will get a better actress.”

Meanwhile, Van Ark was eager to elaborate on her view of the woman-behind-the-man in Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy.

“I feel Lady M. ignites and excites her husband through her sexuality,” she said. “There’s heat there. She’s very feminine. She’s also bigger than life. She has a huge appetite for everything--for sex, for love, for the crown. She wants it all.”

So, despite certain textual allusions to the maternal instinct in Lady Macbeth (“I have given suck, and know/How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me”), Van Ark definitely won’t play pregnant.

She also wants to avoid a stereotypical performance full of icy, domineering fury. For example, when Lady Macbeth bolsters Macbeth’s wavering resolve to assassinate King Duncan by demanding that he “screw (his) courage to the sticking place,” Van Ark says she intends to challenge him with seductive cajolery rather than the implied accusation of cowardice.

“I don’t think a woman has to be like this to get whatever she wants out of a man,” she said, flexing a bicep. “If you know how to push the right buttons and flatter a man, build him up--not in a token way but genuinely flatter him--he’ll bring you the world. That’s my take.”

In other words, she added, think “hot and musky” Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.”

Not that Van Ark has a great deal of stage time to develop “the sensuality and femaleness of the role.” As rehearsals have progressed, she has come to realize that once Macbeth is ignited, “he takes off like a forest fire but Lady M. crashes and burns.”

Indeed, much of the play develops without her. And that creates “a huge gap” in the character, she said. Lady Macbeth’s disintegration takes place off stage. By the time she reappears, a sleepwalker obsessively washing her hands of blood, she is virtually someone else.

“You’re asking the audience to fill in a lot,” said Van Ark.

Even so, she may have a willing audience.

The other day, she was recognized at a local grocery store by several young men. After signing autographs for them, she urged them to come to “Macbeth” by claiming that Shakespeare was “all about lust, greed, love, sex and all those things you see on nighttime TV.”

They were way ahead of her. One of them already had tickets.

“Macbeth” opens Friday and continues through Aug. 29 at the Festival Amphitheatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. $18 to $25. Previews ($12) are this Wednesday and Thursday. All performances begin at 8:30 p.m. No performances Mondays and Tuesdays. (714) 636-7213.