I'm having a similar issue with the theme manager in 9.10.
For example, originally when I opened the Gnome Themes window, all the choices were greyed out and could not be selected. I suspected that might be because I had setup my Gnome implementation to use Emerald as the theme manager, so I switched to Metacity. When I went back into OpenGEU, the Gnome themes were now "clickable," but clicking on them doesn't do anything. In other words, I can select a Gnome theme but it doesn't change anything.
On the other hand, in the main window when I click on e17 Themes, nothing happens at all.