pyicu/libICU error LEFontInstance can't be imported

[n7s]

While I was updating the toolchain I noticed that pyicu seems to have changed and causes the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/cmptxtrender", line 4, in
from palaso.font.shape import make_shaper
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/palaso/font/shape.py", line 4, in
import palaso.font.icule as icule
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/palaso/font/icule.py", line 1, in
from icu import LEFontInstance
ImportError: cannot import name LEFontInstance

The current bionic package is version 1.9.8-0ubuntu1
Force-uninstalling that package and building from source from https://github.com/ovalhub/pyicu seems to bring the same result.

[n7s]

LayoutEngine is deprecated http://userguide.icu-project.org/layoutengine. Would https://github.com/harfbuzz/icu-le-hb provide what we need here?