Sing Easy – Piano Works, London

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

There’s a new trend in musical theatre which makes the experience more interactive for showtune fans. Countless musicals have introduced a sing-a-long night, there’s a musicals Massaoke making the rounds, and now musical fans can settle in for a fun night of dinner, drinks and their choice of song at Piano Works West End.

For those of you who are familiar with the venue, you’ll know the Piano Works as that club with live music where if you tip the musicians, they’ll play a song of your choice and you can dance the night away. Sing Easy,a new event that takes places off in a side room, has more of an interactive cabaret show vibe.

The intimate room adds that special something that you wouldn’t get on a regular night at Piano Works and despite each group getting their own little niche to enjoy the night with their friends, the mutual love of music, and musicals in particular, makes it feel like you’re all part of one big group.

The waiters are very attentive and when they’re not coming over to make sure you’re having the best evening, they’re taking their turn at the microphones at the special request of the audience. They’re so incredibly talented, warm and friendly that it won’t be long before we’re watching them on the West End stage.

In fact, our waitress was so great that as a table we requested that she sing Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ which she nailed, naturally. Her colleagues were phenomenal too with one waitress getting requested multiple times after blowing us all away with, ‘And I Am Telling You’ from Dreamgirls,‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman and ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked. 

Another highlight was definitely when a room full of musical fans got to live out their childhood dreams as the chorus for ‘Any Dream Will Do’ from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.   

Audiences spent the whole evening handing in their requests, and perhaps everyone got a little too carried away as more and more songs sprang to mind, because this was one audience member who didn’t get to hear any of her requests. In fact it got to a point where it was no longer clear if they were doing requests or just singing the songs that they loved. Nevertheless, everyone was singing along, dancing, acting, laughing and just having a great night.

This is still quite early days for Sing Easy so it’s easy to see there are some kinks that need to be worked out, but that doesn’t stop it from being a highly entertaining night out.

It would certainly be worth going back again when everyone knows what they’re doing a bit better. It was absolutely wonderful, but there’s still potential for so much more.   

Tal Fox