Poole’s vibrant history and its 350-year relationship with Newfoundland forms the basis of this rip-roaring community play featuring more than 100 players aged nine to 86.

Described as ‘a play about Poole, written for Poole’, SALT is performed in a promenade style in a Concert Hall beautifully designed by Sophia Lovell Smith, with actors and audience intermingling at will.

SALT was conceived by Dorset-based Angel Exit Theatre with a specially commissioned script for the community play by Stephanie Dale.

Musical direction is by renowned Dorset folk musician, actor and storyteller Tim Laycock whose ensemble pops up all over the place.

With just a handful of professional actors, a choir and three musicians taking part, along with large-scale puppets, such as giant fish, this really is a community effort.

I presume they were mostly Poole people taking part, but I didn’t recognise any of the cast of this tale of fish and frolics – and feisty women.

It is the Antelope Inn, Poole, in 1681, and two ships are preparing to leave for an epic adventure to the coast of Newfoundland to fish for cod.

But this time a group of women is determined to join them – and thus we have the ongoing, to this day, tale of economic migrants as families settle on the other side of the Atlantic to seek better lives when some of them chose not to return home.

And what a wonderful spectacle SALT is, full of colour, noise, many voices, songs, music and dance – it all seems like organised chaos at times.

It’s not always easy to follow and not all voices can always be heard, but as an extravaganza it is unbeatable.

We have three main settings, the Antelope, the treacherous sea crossing and the settlement in Newfoundland, with the action moving smoothly from one to another.

There is a juxtaposed modern subplot running alongside the main tale which, in truth, doesn’t really add a great deal.

SALT is also probably too long, but as an experience it’s not to be missed.