I don’t know why your play option would be missing but pressing the play button on a remote when your in the information screen is not stock Kodi behavior (although, IMO it would be logical if it was) but you can affect this change yourself with a keymap. The following should work with most remotes and I verified it to work with the Estuary and OSMC skins. Their may be some skins this does not work with (without tweaking). This cannot be done with the Keymap Editor add-on and information on how you would create this file can be found [HERE] and [OVER HERE].
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<keymap>
<MovieInformation>
<keyboard>
<play_pause>SendClick(8)</play_pause>
<p>SendClick(8)</p>
<key id="234">SendClick(8)</key>
</keyboard>
<remote>
<play>SendClick(8)</play>
</remote>
</MovieInformation>
<MusicInformation>
<keyboard>
<play_pause>SendClick(8)</play_pause>
<p>SendClick(8)</p>
<key id="234">SendClick(8)</key>
</keyboard>
<remote>
<play>SendClick(8)</play>
</remote>
</MusicInformation>
<SongInformation>
<keyboard>
<play_pause>SendClick(8)</play_pause>
<p>SendClick(8)</p>
<key id="234">SendClick(8)</key>
</keyboard>
<remote>
<play>SendClick(8)</play>
</remote>
</SongInformation>
</keymap>