Fine auditorium, great acoustics, big glass foyer… Canterbury's new Marlowe theatre ticks all the boxes, but where's the drama?

Once, theatre buildings were about make-up, mask and costume. They put opaque layers of ornament between street and stage, through which the paying customer would be ceremoniously conducted. They were solid, stone or of lighter stuff such as stucco made to look like stone. Now, and for at least the past 40 years, exposure is the standard device of new theatres. The big glass foyer wall has taken the place of the Corinthian portico and the spectacle of theatregoers winding up stairs in their anxious smart-casual dress combinations has taken the place of carved putti and gilt. It is one of those changes in architecture which, without being fully debated or discussed, just happens.

The Marlowe theatre in Canterbury is designed by the architect Keith Williams, author of the Unicorn children's theatre in London, and a team of consultants, including the theatre experts Charcoalblue. Being a decent, considered building in the modern tradition, it has a big glass wall. It encloses a foyer wrapped around a composition of volumes that rises towards a fly tower which, in this generally restrained building's gothic moment, ends in a point.

The glass wall allows external spaces – a piazza, a terrace facing the drowsy river Stour – to flow into the internal. It enables people to see, as they ascend a quietly ceremonial stair, a view unfold of the city, its rooftops and, eventually, its cathedral and some surrounding countryside. As they do so, they become seen, crowd as decoration, in the modern way.

Then, unless they are visiting a smaller experimental studio, they enter the auditorium, a 1,200-seater horseshoe form, designed to receive visiting productions of drama, opera (Glyndebourne will tour here), concerts, dance and musicals. Here, the last century has found it hard to improve fundamentally on the century before, and the shape and concept is essentially that of Frank Matcham's many theatres at the turn of the 19th century. It is high and enclosing, with curving balconies that keep the audience reasonably close to the actors and encourage a rapport between them. It is warm-hued, red-orange and dark brown. The main contributions of modernity are the now extensive sciences of acoustics, stage lighting and air handling, which achieve a little more comfort than Victorian theatres, and arguably better sound, or at least the removal of the anxiety at the design stage that these crucial aspects won't work.

Modernity also brings abstract rather than figurative decoration. At the Marlowe this means many vertical strips of timber, in irregular rhythms that are good for the sound, and a zigzagging prismatic shape in the ceiling which conceals equipment and also helps the sound. It has been decided to place some of the audience in slips lining the side walls, both because these are seen as more "democratic" versions of boxes and because "having faces on the side rather than building materials really helps the performer". The overall effect is unified in a way not always achieved in new auditoriums; designed as they are by an army of consultants (on structure, heating and ventilating, acoustics, staging and audience experience), the parts can overwhelm the whole.

The Marlowe follows closely on another cultural construction in an ancient south-eastern city, the Firstsite visual arts centre in Colchester, by Rafael Viñoly, and is its opposite. Colchester went for dazzle; Canterbury went for getting the job done. The Marlowe unified the factions on its city council; Firstsite became an instrument of war between Tories and Liberal Democrats. Firstsite was funded by the Arts Council; the Marlowe, coming along just after the Olympics had hoovered up all spare lottery cash, received no such blessing. The visual arts centre had a disastrous construction history, leading to overruns of cost and time, while the theatre kept to its £25.6m total project budget. It ended up cheaper than Firstsite, even though the scale and technical demands of theatres usually make them expensive.

The Marlowe's smoother ride is partly due to the fact that it was already a well-supported institution, having run since the 1980s in a converted cinema which was demolished to make way for the new building. As the long rake of the cinema made it a poor theatre, and its limited seating precluded many touring shows, the case for the new building was relatively simple and uncontroversial. It may have helped that it was spared the giddiness that sometimes seems to go with Arts Council largesse.

It is also less glamorous than Firstsite's glittering gold curves. It prompts adjectives – sensible, thoughtful, competent – about which a "but" hovers: faint praise in anticipation of a put-down. The praise should not in fact be faint as its qualities and achievements are both fundamental and rare, but there is a but. It does all the right things – effective auditorium, open foyers, considered relationship to the historic city – without quite cohering. There's a lack of touch in the way the dark auditorium, the bright glassy foyers and the old streets of brick and tile come together. There is too much of the office block in the detail of the building, not enough of the theatrical.

The recent Lyric theatre in Belfast manages these transitions better, in part because it is follows less devotedly the idea of the transparent foyer. It is great to see people, and for them to see out, but it is no bad thing to frame and orchestrate their appearances and disappearances. It's part of what theatre is about, whereas a great glass wall tends more to widescreen TV.

The alternation of silly and sensible, as between Colchester and Canterbury, is getting familiar. It was there in the crazed plan for razing and rebuilding the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford-on-Avon, and the eventual realisation of a much more careful part-renovation. Given the choice, it is clearly good to have a building that does its job, as the Marlowe does, with intelligence and care in its design, and without horrible traumas in the making of it. But it would be nice if this were not the only choice, if building could not only work, but also sing.

Fine auditorium, great acoustics, big glass foyer… Canterbury's new Marlowe theatre ticks all the boxes, but where's the drama?

Once, theatre buildings were about make-up, mask and costume. They put opaque layers of ornament between street and stage, through which the paying customer would be ceremoniously conducted. They were solid, stone or of lighter stuff such as stucco made to look like stone. Now, and for at least the past 40 years, exposure is the standard device of new theatres. The big glass foyer wall has taken the place of the Corinthian portico and the spectacle of theatregoers winding up stairs in their anxious smart-casual dress combinations has taken the place of carved putti and gilt. It is one of those changes in architecture which, without being fully debated or discussed, just happens.

The Marlowe theatre in Canterbury is designed by the architect Keith Williams, author of the Unicorn children's theatre in London, and a team of consultants, including the theatre experts Charcoalblue. Being a decent, considered building in the modern tradition, it has a big glass wall. It encloses a foyer wrapped around a composition of volumes that rises towards a fly tower which, in this generally restrained building's gothic moment, ends in a point.

The glass wall allows external spaces – a piazza, a terrace facing the drowsy river Stour – to flow into the internal. It enables people to see, as they ascend a quietly ceremonial stair, a view unfold of the city, its rooftops and, eventually, its cathedral and some surrounding countryside. As they do so, they become seen, crowd as decoration, in the modern way.

Then, unless they are visiting a smaller experimental studio, they enter the auditorium, a 1,200-seater horseshoe form, designed to receive visiting productions of drama, opera (Glyndebourne will tour here), concerts, dance and musicals. Here, the last century has found it hard to improve fundamentally on the century before, and the shape and concept is essentially that of Frank Matcham's many theatres at the turn of the 19th century. It is high and enclosing, with curving balconies that keep the audience reasonably close to the actors and encourage a rapport between them. It is warm-hued, red-orange and dark brown. The main contributions of modernity are the now extensive sciences of acoustics, stage lighting and air handling, which achieve a little more comfort than Victorian theatres, and arguably better sound, or at least the removal of the anxiety at the design stage that these crucial aspects won't work.

Modernity also brings abstract rather than figurative decoration. At the Marlowe this means many vertical strips of timber, in irregular rhythms that are good for the sound, and a zigzagging prismatic shape in the ceiling which conceals equipment and also helps the sound. It has been decided to place some of the audience in slips lining the side walls, both because these are seen as more "democratic" versions of boxes and because "having faces on the side rather than building materials really helps the performer". The overall effect is unified in a way not always achieved in new auditoriums; designed as they are by an army of consultants (on structure, heating and ventilating, acoustics, staging and audience experience), the parts can overwhelm the whole.

The Marlowe follows closely on another cultural construction in an ancient south-eastern city, the Firstsite visual arts centre in Colchester, by Rafael Viñoly, and is its opposite. Colchester went for dazzle; Canterbury went for getting the job done. The Marlowe unified the factions on its city council; Firstsite became an instrument of war between Tories and Liberal Democrats. Firstsite was funded by the Arts Council; the Marlowe, coming along just after the Olympics had hoovered up all spare lottery cash, received no such blessing. The visual arts centre had a disastrous construction history, leading to overruns of cost and time, while the theatre kept to its £25.6m total project budget. It ended up cheaper than Firstsite, even though the scale and technical demands of theatres usually make them expensive.

The Marlowe's smoother ride is partly due to the fact that it was already a well-supported institution, having run since the 1980s in a converted cinema which was demolished to make way for the new building. As the long rake of the cinema made it a poor theatre, and its limited seating precluded many touring shows, the case for the new building was relatively simple and uncontroversial. It may have helped that it was spared the giddiness that sometimes seems to go with Arts Council largesse.

It is also less glamorous than Firstsite's glittering gold curves. It prompts adjectives – sensible, thoughtful, competent – about which a "but" hovers: faint praise in anticipation of a put-down. The praise should not in fact be faint as its qualities and achievements are both fundamental and rare, but there is a but. It does all the right things – effective auditorium, open foyers, considered relationship to the historic city – without quite cohering. There's a lack of touch in the way the dark auditorium, the bright glassy foyers and the old streets of brick and tile come together. There is too much of the office block in the detail of the building, not enough of the theatrical.

The recent Lyric theatre in Belfast manages these transitions better, in part because it is follows less devotedly the idea of the transparent foyer. It is great to see people, and for them to see out, but it is no bad thing to frame and orchestrate their appearances and disappearances. It's part of what theatre is about, whereas a great glass wall tends more to widescreen TV.

The alternation of silly and sensible, as between Colchester and Canterbury, is getting familiar. It was there in the crazed plan for razing and rebuilding the Shakespeare theatre in Stratford-on-Avon, and the eventual realisation of a much more careful part-renovation. Given the choice, it is clearly good to have a building that does its job, as the Marlowe does, with intelligence and care in its design, and without horrible traumas in the making of it. But it would be nice if this were not the only choice, if building could not only work, but also sing.