Dangerous compounds

The Demons Are Forever
Internationally acclaimed actress Connie Nielsen makes her theatre debut when she steps onto Nørrebro Theatre's stage as the vengeful Marquise de Merteuil opposite Christian Tafdrup as the cross-border Valmont. The performance is a radical reinterpretation of Dangerous Liaisons directed by Jennifer Vedsted Christiansen.

In a hypersexualised society where power and sex are inseparable, this edition of Dangerous Liaisons bends an immortal, bloody and brutal conflict over youth for status, lust for access and sex for power, in neon. Here it is, sexually denigrating another human being, a testament to power, where the loser is humiliated and the winner takes all.

All this unfolds in a decadent universe where rococo meets the status symbols of late capitalism. A universe that explores how we all contribute to maintaining the hierarchies we suffer from at the same time. Laclos' work from 1782 is revisited by playwright Marie Bjørn, who with her peculiar artistic gaze uncovers the eternal dynamics between desire, control and destruction, in a contemporary interpretation.

In Dangerous Liaisons, the desires of five people collide in a power play initiated by the upper-class woman Merteuil. Here love is made into a contest, the body into currency, and devotion into a defeat. But soon they become entangled in a game of hierarchies and love that neither of them can control.

The files are out, and now everything collapses in a tragic chain reaction.

The performance is in Danish

Merteuil is played by Connie Nielsen, known for her role in Gladiator (2000, 2024), opposite Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. Nielsen has won the Bodilprisen for her lead role in the film Brødre (2004) by Susanne Bier and most recently she received the Rungstedlund Award for her performance in the television series Drømmeren (2023). She plays opposite Christian Tafdrup, who occupies the role of Valmont. Tafdrup can be experienced for the first time on a theatre stage since 2017. He has most recently had great international success as a director on the film Speak no Evil (2022) and in Denmark with A Terrible Woman (2017).

Dangerous Liaisons is created by acclaimed director Jennifer Vedsted Christiansen. Christiansen received Lauritzen's Believe In You award in 2021. Together with Emma Sehested Høeg, she is the founder of the cross-artistic studio How To Kill a Dog, which has created performances such as Bambi is Back (2026) at Nørrebro Teater and Lolita for Always (2022) on REPUBLIQUE and the TV series KILLJOY (2023) on TV2. Christiansen won the Crown Prince Couple's Cultural Star Sprinkle Award in 2023.

The performance is shown with an entirely new text by the acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Marie Bjørn, freely based on the 1728 letter novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Bjørn received the Reumerts Special Award of the Year in 2022 for You will meet another of AKT1. She has previously been nominated for both Special Prize of the Year and Playwright of the Year for her debut performance Apocalypse (2020) at Teater Momentum. Since 2022, Bjørn has received the Statens Kunstfonds work grant three times as well as the award of the two-year career programme The Young Artistic Elite from Statens Kunstfonds (2024). The performance's seductive visual universe is created by award-winning scenographer and costume designer Petruska Miehe-Renard, who, in addition to being a regular part of How To Kill a Dog, has created stage design and costumes for performances such as ALICE at Betty Nansen Teatret (2023) and who this year (2026) won a Reumert for Theatre Performance of the Year for the performance The Lady in the Sea together with Liv Helm at Husets Teatret and Odense Theater.