The script offers little description of Krapp's den other than:

Front centre a small table, the two drawers of which open towards the audience … On the table a tape-recorder with microphone and a number of cardboard boxes containing reels of recorded tapes.

Attention is at once drawn to the table area not only because of its dominant location but also by the intense circle of light that is funnelled about it. Little else is visibly distinct. There is more space, indeed greater space, than the table area but it is dominated by darkness and relatively unused.

Shut off from whatever and whoever else may exist in the world - 'The earth might be uninhabited' - the setting (like Krapp's existence) has been physically reduced largely to one small but centrally important area of Krapp's den.

The narrowing 'strong white' zone of ego-light envelops a character whose inactivity gives us little to focus on other than a strong white-black contrast in his appearance: black sleeveless waistcoat, grimy white shirt, black trousers, dirty white boots, grey hair, white face. A black reel and a white reel play on a black and white tapedeck.

Screen close-ups reveal the character frequently closing his eyes, shutting out the light, or deliberately tilting back in his chair out of the light, allowing the dark to fall across his face.

Occasionally Krapp peers anxiously into the darkness behind him (VCR: 14.05; 19.34), as if he expects to become totally engulfed. Shutting out the reality of the external world, he is left to discover his own real self, isolated in the mind.