Thanks for your response.
Yes, I have all plugins disabled. I just tried changing the theme to back to the default TwentySixteen. No change.
I should also mention that I have been rebooting the VM every time I changed permissions, and this last attempt at changing themes.
Given that this is a new installation, I agree it would be easy to just hit the reset button. But, my intention was to use WordPress in a production environment. If there is an issue, even one that cannot be readily fixed, I would prefer to know that is the fact rather than be hunting issues down once an install has been populated with user data.
Thanks again, further suggestions would be very welcome.