The Dumb Waiter is set in a basement below a restaurant / cafe. The set was meant to be quite small as it is supposed to relay a rather “claustrophobic” feeling to the audience to increase the inevitable tension being built throughout the play. Key components to the set / setting are a bathroom (you hear a toilet being flushed several times offstage) and a kitchen, also offstage, featuring a gas stove that won’t light. Arguably the most important feature of the setting however, is the dumbwaiter.
Dumbwaiter: (noun) a small elevator for carrying things, especially food and dishes, between the floors of a building.
The dumbwaiter is located between the beds and is definitely one of the main ways of advancing the plot. It also assists in the building of the tension between Ben and Gus as they argue over increasingly insignificant topics i.e. Eccles cakes.
There is also a doorway to a hall included in the set, which is also important to the set, as it is key in the first delivery Gus and Ben receive, the envelope of matches, which starts the plot moving.