The Game Play festival has something for both adult gamers and children. At one extreme: on Saturday evening the new-media artist Jon Rafman led a somewhat boozy crowd through a guided tour of some of the exotic sexual subcultures in Second Life, the popular virtual-reality system (which insists that it is not a game).
“Theater of the Arcade,” a series of five scenes adapted from old games, is also not well suited for young children, though the actor Fred Backus deserves praise for his performance as the deliciously rapacious Pac-Man. Several of the vignettes include significant profanity, and the portrayal of the brothers Luigi and Mario as stoners whacked out on psychedelic mushrooms in the middle of the desert as they deal with visions of huge turtles and man-eating plants is hilarious but not especially kid-friendly.
Then there is “Grand Theft Ovid,” an impressive feat of engineering, coordination and storytelling in which the performers are children themselves.
via nytimes.com