Making Java3D Faster

I have an application that I have inherited that is written using sun’s vrml97 viewer code on top of java3d for rendering. I am wondering what would be a good upgrade path as far as speeding up performance and adding rendering features that would involve the least amount of hacking up the code. Basically the functionality required by the code is to play animations from frame a to frame b in the vrml and register for click events on objects.