Diane Murphy yearns for the urn. That’s one of the more PG-friendly ways she describes her desire for death. The main character in Éimi Quinn’s heroically filthy new black comedy Dookin’ Out, directed by Jennifer Dick, is an iconoclastic, strong-willed 70-year-old in a Black Sabbath shirt, living in an Easterhouse council flat, and she’s decided it’s time to die. It’s not that her life wasn’t full. It’s not that she’s riven with despair. This is her way of wresting back control over a body and daily routine that don’t feel like hers anymore. She’s got no time for taboos or what she calls ‘bible bashing’ (evidently, she’s a child of the heavy-metal era). She wants to go to Switzerland but can’t afford it.

Meanwhile, her carer Julie (Helen McAlpine) has just been betrayed by her controlling man-child husband and has decided to take back control in her own way: by setting up an OnlyFans account. The two hatch a plan to, as Janette Foggo’s Diane poetically puts it, ‘fund ma death with the fruits of your fanny.’ A young postie (Kyle Gardiner) who supplies his ageing customer with weed on the side comes on-board as a wannabe-pimp-cum-PR manager, and our trio are away. Quinn’s script is laugh-out-loud funny and unremittingly potty-mouthed, filled with gems of Glasgow demotic that would have made Tom Leonard blush, such as ‘I’ll get those wee plugs fer yer asshole!’ Between-scene audio clips play on the vacuous, peppy consumerism that surrounds death and mourning in the contemporary west. Suicidal? Maybe you need new carpets!

What’s most interesting about Dookin’ Out is how it connects the taboos surrounding older women’s sexuality and the whole subject of assisted dying. It’s just as frowned upon for an older person to discuss their desire to end their life as it is for a middle-aged woman to loudly long for an orgasm. Perhaps more so. Over the last half century our society has managed, to some extent, to liberate discussion on several topics (from female sexual appetites to abortion rights and gay marriage) from pearl-clutching, post-religious disapprobation. But there is still something dangerous, something transgressive, about openly, calmly stating your desire to die.

This play is a success, then, because it treats the topic of assisted dying with precisely the lack of sobriety it deserves. The sooner we can joke about Dignitas and dildos in the same breath, the better. And while we’re at it, maybe it shouldn’t cost tens of thousands of pounds to travel for a peaceful death. But that’s another discussion entirely.

Dookin’ Oot, Òran Mòr, Glasgow, until Saturday 1 March; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 4–Saturday 8 March; Paisley Town Hall, Tuesday 11 & Wednesday 12 March; Johnstone Town Hall, Thursday 13 & Friday 14 March; Lemon Treen, Aberdeen, Tuesday 18–Saturday 22 March.