The phrase "a play upon" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a clever or humorous use of words, often involving a pun or wordplay.
Example: "The comedian's routine was filled with a play upon common phrases that had the audience laughing."
Alternatives: "a pun on" or "a twist on".
… Masking is a play upon possibility and ours is a society in which possibilities are many.
A hoax is often a parody of some occurrence or a play upon topics that are newsworthy.
The book's apposite title is a play upon its epigraph, "Everything that can be invented has been invented" — an 1899 statement attributed to a U.S. patent commissioner (which, if not apocryphal, might rival "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended" as the Least Accurate Remark Ever Uttered by a Senior Government Official).
Instead, he was going to read a story called, "As a Woman Grows Older," a play upon the title suggested by James Joyce for the English translation of Italo Svevo's novel, "Senilità," which is about a young man who seems to go prematurely senile.
One of his best-known poems, "Shtiler, Shtiler" (1914; "Hush, Hush") is "a credo for a poetry of nuance and understatement, a kind of allegorical reflection on the state of modern Jewish life, and a play upon the messianic expectation that runs through the whole Jewish experience" (according to the American literary and social critic Irving Howe).
While "Bohemian Rhapsody: Star Wars Edition" begins with a play upon some iconic text: "A long, long time ago in a karaoke bar far, far away," the vocals that follow are anything but karaoke-quality.
In 1870, it expanded to cover paintings, statues, and, most importantly, "derivative" works, meaning work based upon an earlier work – a translation, for example, or a play based upon a story.
The drama group I had formed at Wayland prison in Norfolk were rehearsing Terra Nova by Ted Tally, a play based upon Captain Scott's doomed expedition.
In 1773 he published a play based upon the 16th-century German knight, Götz von Berlichingen, and collaborated with Herder and others on the pamphlet "Von deutscher Art und Kunst," which was a kind of manifesto for the Sturm und Drang.
What we at our Newtonian level of existence necessarily conceive of as a substantial reality is in fact - in fact! - a play of spume upon a roiling sea of particles.
You would think that such a simple format would lead to a multitude plays upon it, a seed with a thousand plants.
