Problems w/Local installation of WordPress 4.9.1 within MAMP 4.2 on Mac 10.11.6

Good morning everyone!

Am setting up WordPress 4.9.1 within MAMP 4.2 on a Mac 10.11.6 OS for a friend to do some testing.

The installation is hanging up on the install.php file and not finishing. When I abort the installation, the files are installed, but I’m betting the white screen of death.
I’ve been using the MAMPA logs to track the errors – the message is:

WordPress database error Unknown column ‘customprefix_’ in ‘field list’ for query SELECT customprefix_

While we’re using PHP version 7.1.8, the Mac OS is running PHP 5.5.38