OF all the infamous scenes in the 1988 Broadway musical “Carrie” — itself one of the most infamous productions in theater history — the Act II opening number “Out for Blood” has become the stuff of legend. Leather-clad actors playing high-school jocks leapt about as one of them slaughtered an unseen trough of pigs, whose amplified oinking haunts some theatergoers to this day (and not in a good way). “Kill the pig, pig, pig,” the boys chanted, and their shirtless ringleader, Billy, smeared his chest with the fake porcine blood that he would later dump on the title character at their prom, a horrifying humiliation that was immortalized by Sissy Spacek in the 1976 film version.

It wasn’t just Broadway audiences who were so shell-shocked that some actually booed the show. “Carrie” was such a critical and financial flop (at $8 million) that, afterward, its three creators refused to allow another professional production anywhere in the world — a rare act of artistic exile for a title that is a beloved Stephen King novel and a cult classic movie.

But this winter MCC Theater, a respected Off Broadway company, is trying to reclaim “Carrie” from contempt. The creators have rewritten the story into a modern-day tale of bullying, with mean girls mocking notions of “equality,” and replaced several songs for the $1.5 million production, which is now in preview performances and opens on March 1. Anyone expecting laser lights, simulated fire or the levitating prom gown of the telekinetic Carrie will have to keep searching for bootleg videos of the short-lived Broadway run, for this revival hews to the original vision of a fable about high school instead of the spectacle that became so ridiculed that it inspired a book about Broadway’s biggest botches, “Not Since Carrie.”

If the 1988 production is regarded as an apogee of camp, this Off Broadway revival is toned down — way down — and earnest in its portrayals of emotional extremes. At a recent rehearsal, for instance, the revised Act II began with Carrie and her high school classmates singing a pop-rock number about dressing up and losing weight for the prom (“I’ll be there with the best-looking guy/when we dance the last dance, I swear I’ll cry”). As for the barnyard butchery, which came from the King novel, it occurred offstage (and silently).