Modern dramatists, knowing quite well that they are in partnership with the actors, tend not to put everything on the paper.

But the same is true of even our classical dramatists and comic playwrights. People say that Aristophanes (another playwright known for his antiwar positions) is funny, and he is, but you have not laughed at his work until you see a play of his produced. Think too of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Is it funny, really, to read about Bottom's picnic with the fairies? Doesn't the actor with the donkey's head mask add something to it? Isn't the physical comedy of the pairs of lovers pursuing each other through the forest, for which the stage directions are merely implied by Shakespeare, integral to the play's humor?

As the children were growing up, I was very hardnosed about not allowing them to see a movie based on a book unless either they had read it or we had read it together. (In many cases, notably Disney's adaptation of Kipling's Jungle Books, they were suitably horrified by the distortions and omissions.) Plays were always, always the exception. Pygmalion. The Miracle Worker. The Time of Our Lives. Romeo and Juliet. 1776. Cyrano de Bergerac. The Glass Menagerie. Arsenic and Old Lace. Film doesn't give the immediacy of stage, but it's a decent alternative if stage isn't available, and also has its own value, especially with sets, effects, and the subtlety of expression afforded by close-ups. Performance is the lifeblood of a script. To read it alone robs it of half of its vitality.

By all means, see Pinter produced if you get the opportunity. Don't expect to leave laughing, though. As you have probably gathered, he's not that kind of guy.