English playwright, remembered for his unusual and highly successful play Outward Bound (1923), about a group of passengers who find themselves making an ocean voyage on a ship that seems to have no crew. Slowly they realize that they are dead and bound for the other world, which is both heaven and hell.

Vane, who started his career as an actor, was shell-shocked early in World War I. Later in the war he returned to France to perform behind the lines. Back home in England, he began to write plays. Because he could find no one willing to produce his strange Outward Bound, he hired a small London suburban house called the Everyman Theatre and mounted the production himself at a total cost of £120. The play was an instant success and was transferred to a leading London theatre. Its success later was duplicated in New York, and it has been twice filmed.