On June 11th, my friends and I squeezed together on a single bed, a CBS livestream cued up on my laptop, and prepared ourselves for the three-hour musical theatre spectacular that was the 71st Annual Tony Awards. Like many of the other 6 million viewers who tuned in for the Tonys, my friends and I had picked a favorite out of the four Best Musical nominees: all three of us were rooting for Dave Malloy’s electropop masterpiece, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812.

I won’t beat around the bush: Great Comet lost. Not only the coveted Best Musical title, but nearly every single one of the 12 awards for which it was nominated. The big winner of the night? Dear Evan Hansen, the smash-hit show by renowned duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, most recently in the limelight for their work on the Oscar-nominated La La Land.

Not only was this disappointing for me and my friends: it indicated a much deeper issue with the Great White Way as a whole.

Dear Evan Hansen is not a bad show. Its star, Ben Platt, exhibits a remarkable acting range throughout each performance, and flaunts a sweet tenor voice that showcases itself particularly in songs such as the compulsively hummable “Waving Through A Window,” which he performed on the night of the Tonys. The theme of the musical is one of self-acceptance, with particular regard to mental illness--a message that I endorse by all means, having lived my whole life beneath the weight of the same particular illness as the titular Evan.

But Dear Evan Hansen is not revolutionary. Its score, while catchy, is lacking in distinguishing qualities. The screen-centric proscenium set design comes across as a less effective emulation of 2010’s American Idiot, and the theme of neurodiversity, while vital, is not groundbreaking (consider instead Next to Normal, snubbed at the 2009 Tony Awards).

And perhaps most concerning of all is the overwhelming lack of diversity: every single named character in Dear Evan Hansen is white, and while women do have some prominence in the story, it ultimately revolves around men. Only two songs on the cast album feature women alone (five feature men alone). It is directed by a white man.

Rachel Chavkin, Mimi Lien, and Paloma Young--the director, scenic designer, and costume designer of Comet--refuse to be walled in by convention. Lien and Chavkin have worked together to transform the Imperial Theatre into a fully immersive Russian nightclub, featuring winding staircases, onstage seating, scarlet-curtained walls, gilded portraits, and enough massive postmodern chandeliers to put The Phantom of the Opera to shame (the latter being the work of lighting designer Bradley King). This breathtaking environment is populated by a wealth of racially diverse performers, decked out in the deliciously anachronistic costumes of Young, who is unafraid to pair genuine 19th century vintage garb with neon-dyed hair, glow sticks, and ripped tank tops. These performers dance, rove the theatre, interact with the audience, and play their own instruments, all while belting and cheering their way through composer Dave Malloy’s intricate, genre-bending score. The energy is unbeatable, the innovation undeniable. It may be overwhelming and it may be hard to understand, but it is guaranteed to be unlike anything you have experienced before.

And now comes the matter of diversity. Remember Dear Evan Hansen’s two women-only songs? The Great Comet has eight. The tremendously talented Denee Benton stars as Natasha, and Josh Groban is soon to be replaced by Hamilton’s Okieriete Onaodowan as Pierre, making Comet the first race-blind Broadway musical in recent memory to cast two black leads. Shoba Narayan, Benton’s understudy, is the first South Asian woman to take the stage in a lead role on Broadway in 12 years. I could go on, but ticking off boxes is not what matters most. What matters is that Comet boasts a truly diverse cast, giving both opportunity and representation to the actors of color who are so often overlooked in the Broadway community. And beyond race and gender, Rachel Chavkin and the rest of the Comet team are not afraid to load their version of 19th century Russia with LGBT representation: same-gender couples dance together in more than one scene, and an interracial female pair shares a passionate kiss onstage during the number performed at the Tony Awards.

All this with lyrics lifted almost entirely from text by Leo Tolstoy. Because, yes, The Great Comet of 1812 is based on War and Peace.

Weeks later, I’m still appalled that this masterpiece was shunted aside in nearly every category in favor of a cookie-cutter musical like Dear Evan Hansen. Granted, I’m a bit biased, but the troubling dichotomy of these two shows is only the tip of the iceberg. The revival of Falsettos, a 1992 musical featuring a largely Jewish cast and multiple LGBT couples, received five nominations and no wins. The other Best Musical nominees, Groundhog Day and Come From Away, feature many more actors of color than Dear Evan Hansen. Come From Away won a single award--Christopher Ashley for best direction--but otherwise there was nothing for either of them. In fact, of the twenty actors nominated this year for both Lead and Featured categories in musicals, eighteen were white. The two outstanding exceptions were Denee Benton and Eva Noblezada, both of whom lost in their category to Broadway veteran Bette Midler. Things looked marginally better on the straight play front, but the hard truth is that their popular appeal is negligible compared to that of the musicals.

Last year was a different story. Last year, black actors won every single musical acting category. The awards were swept away by Hamilton, the story of--well, I probably don’t need to tell you about Hamilton.

Here’s the thing: Hamilton is not enough.

Great Comet is not enough, either. But both of them are game-changing. Both are mind-blowing and soul-inspiring not only for their standout diversity, but for the ways in which they have re-established musical theatre as a relevant art form. In this increasingly digital era, in a world where we receive endless feeds of false news and our president is more active on Twitter than he is in the Oval Office, it can be easy to cave to the palatability of the lily-white, plasma-screen-infused experience that is Dear Evan Hansen. The Tonys were happy to do this.

But right now, art matters. Creativity matters. Ingenuity matters. Opportunity, representation, and recognition matter.

Hamilton is not enough.