Clunky in Chrome

I think this is caused by the way your page is built up. The widget area in your theme is built up using a list: ‘<ul><li>...</li></ul>‘, which are inline-elements. These elements cannot contain block-level elements: ‘<div></div>‘, of which the slideshow is built up. As are your other widgets, by the way.

If you rebuild the sidebar using block-level elements, the website is a step closer to consisting of valid HTML as well. This helps displaying in Internet Explorer as well, especially the older versions. You can check for HTML validity here.