You really notice uncomfortable theater seats when a show is this bad. Suffering through Thoroughly Modern Millie in London's Shaftesbury Theatre, my mind keeps coming back to the lack of legroom in the middle rows of the 92-year-old playhouse. The screaming colors of the Richard Morris and Dick Scanlan musical — purple and orange skyscrapers, dancing typists in green tights — do nothing to ease the discomfort. The show, an adaptation of the 1967 Julie Andrews film about an independent girl in 1920s New York City, is glitzy, but synthetic and charmless — the songs aggressively brash, the desperation to provide an "event" palpable. The lead, Amanda Holden, is an appealing British TV actress, but lacks the charisma for the big stage. And yet this is one of the most-hyped West End shows of the year.

Is Theaterland really in so parlous a state? Judging by attendance, everything's fine: 12 million people went to a West End show last year, up from 8.5 million in 1980. But those figures don't tell the whole story. Many of those millions were drawn to old staples like Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, and the rocktacular musicals that have become a West End mainstay (Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night has just joined long-runners like Queen's We Will Rock You, alone seen by over 750,000 people last year, and the Abba-infused Mamma Mia, attended by 676,000). Attendance is also boosted by tourism and big-name celebrities (Madonna, Matthew Perry) in often flimsy stage vehicles like last year's Up For Grabs or the recent Sexual Perversity in Chicago. But drama — which has always been the soul of the West End — has never been in worse shape.

Andre Ptaszynski, chief executive of the city's biggest theater group, Really Useful Theatres, estimates that if London's playgoers numbered 250,000 in 1970, the figure is probably closer to 180,000 now. This is at least in part because of the West End's inability to serve up high-quality new fare. "This is the worst autumn I can remember for plays," Ptaszynski says. "Traditionally, this is the time of year when you find really good product, but there's very little." And whereas the 1970s were rife with commercially bankable new writers — from David Hare to Tom Stoppard — a whole generation has gone missing in action, lost to the greener fields of TV and cinema.

If the theater is lacking in spirit, it is also sagging in body. A new report from the Theatres Trust, which keeps an eye on the physical state of British playhouses, says the West End is in need of emergency surgery. Of the 40 theaters it inspected, 40% need major structural or architectural restoration; 26% have inadequate legroom; 24% have no climate control; 60% have restricted-view seats; and 65% need more toilets. Only a transfusion of $415 million over the next 15 years, it says, can save the West End's aging commercial theaters from the wrecking ball. Ian Brown, artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, one of Britain's foremost regional venues, is outraged. "London theaters take a lot of money from producers, and very few are empty for long," he says. "Why haven't the owners been investing to improve the buildings?"

The West End's decline has been debated for almost as long as there has been a West End. "The theater will simply go on dying," the playwright John Osborne famously said, "as it has done for centuries." And London still manages to stage such outstanding fare as Ed Hall's all-male production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Terry Johnson's Hitchcock Blonde, which were both critical and commercial successes this summer. Jerry Springer: The Opera proved again that musicals can be great art as well as great spectacle. And even a cheesy musical can offer guilt-free pleasure: last year's Bombay Dreams, which cashed in on the craze for all things Indian, is a balmy, gorgeous evening — and it's still packing them in.

But the shortage of compelling, innovative new material is a serious problem. Some 30 years ago, London's commercial theater was dominated by producers with taste and vision who promoted a generation of hip new playwrights. Michael Codron, for instance, presented Stoppard, Alan Ayckbourn, Michael Frayn and Alan Bennett. Those writers remain stars, but a similar-minded young producer stands little chance today: there are few bright young playwrights to choose from, and the high cost of staging plays discourages risk taking. Even producer Richard Jordan — whom Codron calls "the young Michael Codron" — finds it tough. To produce a play with half a dozen actors in a West End venue, Jordan, 29, would have to pay around $500,000 — and that's not including the $16,000-$50,000 a week in theater rent. "If Harold Pinter started out today," Jordan grumbles, "it's unlikely he'd be in the West End." Charlotte Jones, one of the few young British playwrights to have had a West End hit with 2002's Humble Boy, says the high commercial stakes fueled a bout of writer's block when she set out to compose her next play, The Dark, scheduled for the off-West End Donmar Warehouse. "If there isn't new writing in the West End, it will die and the theater will go to ruin," she warns.

Musicals don't have it easy, either. Since the British revolution wrought by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh in the 1980s saw shows like Cats run for decades and gross nearly $2 billion worldwide, production costs have soared and impresarios are under immense pressure to supply hits on a grand scale. Which means they want a guarantee — a big star or pop group or an old hit to revive. Both pioneers are currently preparing new shows. The Woman in White will see Lloyd Webber return to the gothic ground he mined so lucratively with Phantom of the Opera; his last musical cost $3 million. Mackintosh's Mary Poppins is likely to budget well above $10 million.

The same commercial pressures have forced New York City's Broadway to all but abandon any attempt to mount serious or edgy theater and concentrate instead on revivals and song-and-dance shows. The Americans rely on British theater to field-test new material (theater owners are competing to bring Springer to New York City) and supply bankable dramas. But American producers know that London has a built-in advantage when it comes to innovation: creativity and risk taking are encouraged by state subsidies. "Though the West End is ragged at the moment," says Bob Boyett, American producer of shows like The Crucible and Sweet Smell of Success, "the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company are shaping up as invaluable sources of great drama."

Unlike the West End, the NT and RSC can afford to take risks because they are heavily subsidized: the NT gets $23 million a year in government money, the RSC $21 million. Both attract high-profile sponsors, such as Accenture and Shell. Perhaps more important, both companies have energetic, innovative new artistic directors. Michael Boyd at the RSC and Nicholas Hytner at the NT are both at the end of their first season in the job, and are getting rave reviews for revitalizing the subsidized sector of British theater.

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) Hytner's first season was an almost unbroken string of popular and critical hits. There was Shakespeare's Henry V, in modern dress with echoes of Iraq, and with a bravura performance by Adrian Lester. There was Springer, and new playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah's murder story Elmina's Kitchen, a frank look at the mean streets of East London. Hytner's varied repertoire choices and discounted tickets found new audiences — and sold-out houses. He's currently deep in rehearsals for a two-show adaptation of Philip Pullman's cult novels His Dark Materials, opening in December. With a cast of more than 30 and a tale that leaps from the Arctic wastes all the way to heaven, it's suitably ambitious. To accustom young artists to large stages — a fear born from the greater financial security of studio theaters — Hytner has launched a training program for playwrights in larger rooms like the vast Olivier Theatre, so they could learn how to work within its dimensions. The National, he has said, must find "a vitality that reflects the vitality of the nation and the diversity and energy of its interlocking communities."

For his part, Boyd says he wants artistes to see the RSC as "somewhere they can be liberated." He spent his first season in the job reorganizing, planning and wooing back long-estranged RSC stars and seeking a permanent London base (to be announced in January). He also oversaw hits like The Taming of the Shrew. Coming soon: Judi Dench returns for the first time in over a decade for All's Well That Ends Well (playing from Dec. 3); Corin Redgrave will play King Lear from June; and Toby Stephens, who became famous with the company with his 1994 performance of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, will come back to play Hamlet in July, directed by Boyd. "Michael has given the RSC a new lease of life," says Stephens. "He can make it great again."

All of this vitality, of course, feeds life back into the West End. The NT's Springer opens this week at the Cambridge Theatre. It will be followed by other productions including Michael Frayn's new play Democracy and a revival of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers. Michael Grandage, head of Covent Garden's Donmar Warehouse, believes London is on the brink of a resurgence. "While the RSC and NT weren't at their best, artists started moving to regional theater, which had a renaissance," he explains. "With Nick and Michael poised for a golden era of their companies, this is the most exciting time I can remember." He hasn't forgotten the producer's golden rule: be an optimist.

• JAMES INVERNE
• Ticket sales are up in London's theaters. Too bad about the plays