You can get out of the “Select a theme” trap by doing the following.
You will that when you attempt to configure wordpress you’re stuck on a page that the URL looks like:
https://www.mysitename.com/wp-admin/?page=wpem&step=theme
erase everything after the &
and load
https://www.mysitename.com/wp-admin/?page=wpem
It will then put you on a screen that offers to set things up for you. select NO THANKS to that and confirm you want to set up wordpress yourself and then it will dump you into a normal dashboard.