ARABELLA AND MR. CRACK

A low-comedy version, with frowsy overweight maid and master and a typical Gackenbach hound in place of the usual cat, of the English folk anecdote better known as ""Master of All Masters."" Both Anne Rockwell and, most fetchingly, Marcia Sewall gave us their interpretations of the piece a decade ago, and there seems no point in Gackenbach's changing the words from inspired to belabored nonsense--""Hurry,"" shouts the housekeeper at the end. ""Get out of your bubbleloo. Pull on your salty toasters and jump into your whomper whackers quickly. . . .""--or in picturing it with figures who might be Zemach characters gone to seed.