Such a conclusion feels like yet another cruelty hurled at “Carrie,” the musical’s three creators said in a telephone interview. They put the onus of the abbreviated Off Broadway run on critics, contending that many of them chose not to assess the revival on its merits but to analyze it through the prism of the Broadway flop. Most major reviews of “Carrie” did compare the two productions, given the infamy of the original and the significant changes to the script and score for the revival.

Several reviewers complained about certain songs and a one-note blandness in the high school scenes, but the sharpest criticism was that “Carrie” had been de-camped to the point of dullness. Some critics and theater bloggers especially bemoaned the decision by the director Stafford Arima to forgo dumping red liquid over Carrie’s head during the prom. Mr. Arima used projections to convey the blood splattering, which Mr. Cohen termed a “gangbusters choice” and Mr. Pitchford described as a fresh approach that avoided recycling what worked best on film.

Mr. Gore added: “There are some people who would have been happy if the first two rows of the audience were given slickers and blood got all over them. Some theater companies will do that in the future, I imagine.”

To that end, the creators and MCC said one successful result of the revival is that the musical would become a licensable property available for productions at high schools, colleges and regional theaters. After the 1988 Broadway production closed, the creators were so devastated that they refused hundreds of requests by directors and theater companies to stage “Carrie” until Mr. Arima pitched his vision. Now the creators are ready to say yes to productions, and are already talking to one — SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston — about doing “Carrie” next spring.

Paul Daigneault, the producing artistic director of SpeakEasy, said he found the Off Broadway production “haunting” as well as “a great time,” adding that the musical was a strong fit with his company’s mission of producing socially relevant and cutting-edge theater. (The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Next to Normal,” about a depressed mother who attempts suicide, is playing there now.) Mr. Daigneault, who would direct “Carrie,” said he wanted to give “three-dimensionality to all of the characters, even those who don’t have a lot of words, and to explore the vulnerabilities of the major and minor characters.” He said it was too soon to say if he would use liquid blood, but added that he liked Mr. Arima’s projections. (Mr. Daigneault emphasized that his ideas for “Carrie” should not be read as criticism of the Off Broadway run.)

Mr. Cohen said that the creators would give a free hand to directors and producers on most artistic choices, though he added that “keeping out the absurd camp elements is important because we never want ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ version of ‘Carrie.’ ” And he rejected the idea that “Carrie” would have worked better as camp, or at least with winks, saying its creators had a different goal.

“We spent three years revisiting ‘Carrie’ scene by scene, song by song, trying to rescue a show that hadn’t met our dreams the first time,” Mr. Cohen said. “Having faced all the baggage and all the naysayers who said ‘Carrie’ would never happen again onstage, and on a stage in New York no less, we did what we wanted to do — fix the show.

“To be candid, yes, we’re disappointed that it didn’t run longer,” he added. “But if the experience is bittersweet, it’s more sweet than bitter.”