Over the past year it is not just the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that has undergone upheaval. The Herald has had its own share of sea change and no-one needs reminding of the recent drama in the Scottish banking sector. So it is with the sense of welcoming an old friend we are particularly happy to see again that the first recipients of Bank of Scotland Herald Angel Awards are revealed this morning.

The award winners are chosen by The Herald's critical team each week as recognition of excellence wherever they find it in Festival Edinburgh. Not unusually in the first week of the Fringe, they have seen it in the Traverse programme. However, of the three Traverse Angels this week, only one roosts in the building. Grid Iron Theatre Company, specialists in site-specific theatre and previous winners of an Archangel for their sustained success with productions in Edinburgh, are performing Barflies, an adaptation of the writing of Charles Bukowski, in the Barony Bar in Broughton Street. With fine performances from Keith Fleming, Gail Watson and musician David Paul Jones, it is another triumph by director Ben Harrison and the company.

Ontroerend Goed from Ghent are also previous winners, with last year's Once And For All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen at the Traverse. This year they are off-site at the Mercure Point Hotel, with a very intimate piece of experimental performance in which five actors challenge an audience of five by trying to build a relationship with their partner in just 25 minutes. It has been the main talking point of week one among everyone who has seen it.

In the Traverse itself, Dennis Kelly, whose last work in Scotland was a children's show for the National Theatre of Scotland, has written Orphans, a grown-up drama for a co-production with Birmingham Rep and Paines Plough. The playwright plunges a happy couple into an extreme dilemma and asks profound questions about what it means to "do the right thing".

Glasgow-based performer Nic Green has already presented the individual parts of her Trilogy, but they have been radically reworked for the show that is the lynchpin of the Arches programme at St Stephens in Stockbridge. Green and her cohorts re-examine the building blocks of 1970s feminism from a contemporary perspective in a show that now famously includes an invitation to get naked. Everyone who sees the work finds it extraordinarily uplifting, clothed or not.

DOT 504, meanwhile, are very much the sort of company who used to feature in the Aurora Nova programmes at St Stephens. Their elemental dance theatre impressed last year with Holdin' Fast and they have returned to Zoo Southside this year with 100 Wounded Tears, a brave and physical piece which is as moving as it is amusing.

As the Fringe began, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival was winding up, and one of the final concerts was by Jack Bruce, Scotland's contribution to the 1960s supergroup Cream. In the company of guitarist Robin Trower and drummer Gary Husband, the Cambuslang musician showed his playing and singing are still of the finest in a concert at the Queen's Hall which covered his glorious musical history in the best of company.

This week's Archangel winner is an organisation with a Fringe history that now stretches back over 20 years. Universal Arts is directed by Tomek Borkowy and managed by Laura Mackenzie Stuart, and has been a crucial part of the fabric of the Fringe, bringing performances of music and theatre, dance and work for children from all over the world to a succession of venues. They have included St Brides in Gorgie, the Gateway Theatre on Leith Walk and the tiny Hill Street Theatre, which was once run by Judith Docherty, founder and producer of Grid Iron. This year, as last, Universal Arts is operating from the Freemason's Hall in George Street (styled the New Town Theatre), St George's West and the Edinburgh International Conference Centre with another vibrant and colourful programme.

The Little Devil this week, awarded for overcoming the inevitable hurdles which life throws in the way of many a performance, goes to another Traverse show. Dancer David Hughes worked in collaboration with Al Seed, an Angel-winner last year, on The Red Room, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Mask of the Red Death.

On the eve of its opening, the show lost not one but two members of its small cast, due to sudden personal tragedies.

With the company's dance apprentice Kirsty Pollock stepping into one role, it was left to Seed to don female attire and bring his own unique skills to other one. That the show is still a success says much for the creative skills of all involved.