YORK company Pilot Theatre like to break down cultrural barriers with their international bridge-building liaisons.

The latest is part of Boomerang, a project supported by the European Commission that connects six companies across three continents in an exploration of migration and immigration – that most topical of social issues – under the banner of "A Global Theatre Intervention".

Companies from Italy, Portugal and Canada are participating too, but Pilot was teamed with the Australian Theatre for Young People, whose artistic director, Fraser Corfield, directs Pilot's new commission from Nottingham playwright Emteaz Hussain in a re-telling Albert Camus's L'Etranger from the perspective of its two forgotten women, the French Marie (Lou Broadbent) and the Algerian Sumaya (Sara Sadeghi).

Hussain's brief was to write on the overlapping themes of differing perspectives, otherness and dislocation, hence the title Outsiders. Although Marie and Sumaya share a stage, they are poles apart, divided by more than the silhouette that Marie forms behind the frame of a besieged domestic setting in Lydia Denno's design.

They tell two versions of a story: in a nutshell the sound of the gunshot at the start denotes that Marie's partner has killed Sumaya's Arabian partner beneath a bright, blinding sun on a beach. They cannot agree on what really happened on that day but both are trapped in intransigent positions, brought on by their personal, cultural, social and political differences.

The actresses keep moving positions on the stage – unlike the women's stance on what took place – but this is a linear, text heavy, arid piece that would work better on the radio, such is its austere, minimalist theatricality.

Outsiders, Pilot Theatre, Black Box Studio, Department of Theatre, Film and Television, University of York, last week, and on tour until November 28, including Hull Truck Theatre, November 17 and 18. Box office: hulltruck.co.uk or 01482 323638.