REVIEW: Sing Easy at the Piano Works

Sing Easy is described as ‘A fun night out where you choose the songs and the whole room sings along. Any thing from musical theatre to pop, rock and folk! You request it and our pianist will play it and the whole room will sing it! ‘

Hosted in Piano Works, close to Piccadilly Circus, the location for this sort of night out is perfect. On arrival you go down a set of stairs and through their larger room which was filled with people dancing along to a live band and are taken to a room in the back for Sing Easy. It’s a small room with an intimate feel; as expected a piano in the corner, a small bar and a space in the middle should you feel the need to get up and have a dance.

You are led to your table and a young singing style waiter or waitress comes and takes your drinks order. I believe there is a dinner package that you can buy but we just had the drinks. I did see some food come out on another table and it did look very nice. Drinks were reasonably priced with a good selection of wine, spirits and cocktails. There seems to be a different kind of happy hour event most days so that’s worth checking out.

The premise of the evening is that you have a stack of request forms on your table in a container with pens and you fill them out with your song request. We arrived after the evening had kicked off so hadn’t been explained how exactly to make requests. We had worked out to fill the form in but didn’t know whether or not to place it on the piano ourselves or whether the waiting staff took them for us; it seemed to be the latter. The pianist was great, clearly a very talented musician who seemed to be able to play every song under the sun from musical theatre, to pop. The waiting staff took it in turns to lead some of the songs as well, clearly young trained performers with great voices.

The evening really does depend on the group of people you have in the room.

We seemed to have lots of stagey people in with us so naturally the night took a musical theatre turn with songs from The Greatest Showman, Smash and Les Mis. People seemed to really be enjoying themselves and it was great to see the waiting staff interacting with the audience as they got up out of their seats to dance and sing along. Perhaps the night would not be as interactive if you didn’t get a bunch of stagey people in the room, however, the concept does lend itself to performers and performer types, so I don’t see that being a problem.

If you do fancy an alternative night out, not traipsing through the clubs of central London and you like the idea of having a good sing along, this is for you. 

Review by Thomas Smith 

Rating: ★★★★