WOComponent recursion

I wrote a content management system that displays the files and 
directories it manages in a giant tree. Originally, the 
file-manipulation pages were direct actions, so I wrote the 
tree-displayer as a simple recursive Java method that returned a giant, 
formatted HTML string. This is not a big site -- there are around 300 
files being displayed; the directories are only nested 4 or 5 levels, 
and most are top-level with a bunch of files and no other children.

I just reimplemented the page using a recursively-called WOComponent and 
  performance took a serious hit. The page takes ~40 seconds to load 
instead of ~3. Template Caching is on. synchronizesVariables...  returns 
false.

Is this just WOComponent overhead?

I tried to make go stateless too, but I use JSModalWindow which is 
stateful (why?) and a stateless component cannot have stateful children. 
PWO Chapter 7 talks about Dynamic Elements, so maybe that's the way to go.

If anybody has any hints, send 'em my way.

Thanks,

zak.