From David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet’’ to Brenda Withers’s brilliantly dislocating “The Ding Dongs, or What Is the Penalty in Portugal?’’ no tour of suburbia is complete, it seems, without a visit to its creepy side.

Another entry in that crowded category is “Blood Play,’’ a fitfully engrossing but ultimately unsatisfying production by the Brooklyn-based Debate Society, which is playing through Saturday as part of ArtsEmerson’s “The Next Thing’’ Festival.