Sassy Sara works the crowd

IF there's one thing Sara Bareilles is known for among fans, it's that her concerts are often interspersed with sassy comments and off-the-cuff banter with the audience. (Verbal diarrhoea, she calls it.)

At the Esplanade Concert Hall on Wednesday night - the last stop on The Little Black Dress Tour - the American singer-songwriter was not only at the top of her game as a musician, she showed serious comedic chops too.

Besides stirring the audience with her powerful voice as she covered her hits such as Brave, King of Anything and Uncharted, Bareilles was armed with a sizzling arsenal of comebacks that had the 1,614 full-house crowd in stitches. When an audience member yelled out that someone was celebrating a birthday, Bareilles responded with a polite "Happy Birthday!" before pointedly adding, "I have one too."