empathy chat is ridiculously slow and shows no text on the default theme

Binary package hint: empathy

I'm assuming these to things are connected, it seems like there is an issue with the theme engine and hence slowing the applications responses.

Basically open empathy and try to send a message to someone on FB or google chat the system goes into a massive slow down.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: empathy 3.1.2.1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0-0.1-generic 3.0.0-rc2
Uname: Linux 3.0-0-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jun 16 22:30:33 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110301.2)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-06-14 (1 days ago)