Review: Prose of the Old Days in “Tunggulah Aku di Gunung Parang”

Review by Nabila “Hana” Hananti, editing by Rakaputra Paputungan.

On May 15th 2025 at Galeri Indonesia Kaya, the non-profit foundation Ngajagi Kreasi Nusantara brought their debut performance onto the stage in collaboration with Teaterindo. Through this show, Ngajagi intends to revitalize trelatively unknown Sukabumi folklore and legends by adapting them into a musical titled Tunggulah Aku di Gunung Parang (Wait for Me at Mount Parang). A form of ‘greeting’ from the people of Sukabumi, so to speak.  

This show was produced by R.I. Kamase. Den Aslam acted as the writer & director, collaborating with composer Jamil Hasyani for the music. The dance was choreographed by Raka Reynaldi. And Raihan Zidane acted as the creative director. 

The play itself goes as such:

In 1818, when Indonesia was still under Dutch colonial control, a woman retells a story of the past to her young daughter—about a legend from their hometown. The tales from the past are formatted as a flashback sequence, as the audience is suddenly transported to 16th century Pajajaran, to the time of a romance between Nyi Pudak Arum and Wangsa Suta.

From then, the narration keeps alternating between the past and the ‘present’ until, ultimately, the fate of the storyteller and character from the story collide—as the woman has to lose her daughter, similar to how Nyi Pudak Arum loses her lover. The story ends there.

For a theatrical performance, this show’s progression certainly relied most on its narration—as in, an actual narrator telling the story. The character’s dialogue is mostly exposition with a hint of fluff. Not to mention the multimedia used that flat out wrote the narration on the wall for us to read. While the story indeed is historical fiction, the play is formatted in a way that makes it seem like a documentary instead. 

Typically, plays have a ‘storyteller’ to facilitate the ideal method of storytelling— ”show, don’t tell”. While the storyteller is telling the story, other actors on stage would ‘show’ said story by visualizing it to their listener. However, Tunggulah Aku di Gunung Parang was largely ‘told’ and not ‘shown’. 

In this play, we’re led to believe that the storyteller is the mother who told the story to her daughter. Yet when the characters from the story came onto the stage, they too continued to narrate their own tale 

The dancing was gorgeous and the music was complimentary. Yet they largely delivered emotions without further progressing the story. While this is a legitimate artistic approach, the marketing material promoted it as “musical drama” (drama musikal), which brings with it expectations of a modern musical theater structure – i.e. music and dance are used to develop the story and characters.

I believe that the creatives did have a vision for this show, but it wasn’t delivered as intended. This method of storytelling is repetitive and could use plenty of refinement. But, the narration itself on its own was strung together with beautiful choices of words. The prose was gorgeous, one that I could admire on its own. The circumstances of the characters were tragic; unfortunately, the act couldn’t quite pull through.

Ultimately, I was entranced by the words, and by the end of  it I found that I had watched a beautiful poetry. 

Broadwayworld Indonesia is a media partner of Tunggulah Aku di Gunung Parang.