The bug is also in version 6.21
Maybe I should clarify what I mean. Although you can use the -t option in $read to specify that the line should be treated as text, this option is not available in the /play command.
The only workaround here is to "play" commands with the -c option and read the text.
Another thing I would like to add is that if /play is using $read internally, this should probably be replaced with a /fopen $fread /fclose loop.